Neo-Noir Girlfriend Tries to Replace Me
Karyna McGlynn & Fez Avery | Poetry
We sit in the dark movie palace, bottle-blonde
& conjoined at the armrest. She pulls
a black mass from her purse. A gun. No—
a wig. Her breath is hot in my ear: I want to
be called Anastasia, she says. I won’t be
a single syllable. The movie goes: two girls
fighting to the death, pow pow, the late 90s
hitches like a cola can in the freezer.
We argue on the porch of our shotgun house.
I try to lock her out but she’s hidden
my key. She keeps appearing behind
the venetian blinds, switching eyes at me.
Like if I so much as glow
or shrink, she’ll snatch
my face & use it to fool Mother.
She snugs a finger under my wig cap,
snaps it back. You love me, she says, like
she grew up with fur refrigerator handles
& did pastel drugs, riding side saddle.
I say, Darling, you must stop
wearing my clothes. They keep disappearing.
She won’t leave the underside of my bed: all nails
& raw scribbling. Every night she licks me
to sleep like a kicked dog. I can’t get her
smell out of my carpet: sea foam sick
& frangipani, the roséd lard of Nana’s lipsticks.
Out the window I see a mountain of fabric
on fire. All my rehearsal skirts. Every t-strap shoe.
Fez Avery is a poet and performer from Michigan. His work can be found in The Journal, Gulf Coast, Barrelhouse, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. He is a poetry instructor at Interlochen Arts Camp, holds an MFA in poetry from Virginia Tech, and is currently a PhD student at Western Michigan University. His debut poetry collection, CLAYBOY, is forthcoming from Write Bloody Publishing in May 2026. Find him online at fezavery.com.
Karyna McGlynn is a writer, visual artist, and educator, and the author of three poetry collections from Sarabande Books, including 50 Things Kate Bush Taught Me About the Multiverse (Lambda Literary Finalist), Hothouse (New York Times Editor’s Choice), and I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl (Kathryn A. Morton Prize). Their work appears in Poetry Magazine, Kenyon Review, New England Review, and elsewhere. McGlynn is Director of Creative Writing at Interlochen Center for the Arts and was recently Visiting Distinguished Professor of Poetry in the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan.