“Post Inhibition Drip” Works by A. Pikovsky

A. Pikovsky is a poet living in Philly who is the child of Jewish Soviet immigrants. These are selections (3 poems) taken from a pending collection which deals with the self & universal struggles of shame, self-awareness, & desire, among many other internal /external conflicts. A. Pikovsky has been published across several literary mags, most recently poems featured in Wild Roof Journal & Cathexis NW Press (Summer 2023), & for the fall, Red Noise Collective (print).

Desperation baby

oh desperate baby
kiss it away
shine the parts of me
i lost in the flood
of nothingness
dust off my inhibitions
sweeten my shame
& uncover my proclivities
carry me unpackage me then promise me
you’ll leave
leave me with cartons of comfort

oh lonesome sweetie
i’m inept at the pretending
kissing is a dance of forest floors
the leaves shake and stalks shrug
your plates spin &
all of my cones spit
wear me down
display me like last year’s
holiday dinnerwear
eat off my bones
i never needed this skin anyhow
knead thru me
caress my courage
fool me unfurl me then forget me
find the soft spaces where
i am filo flaking
all over your fantasy

oh bunny bear
lift me above the waves
there’s too much water
in my chart
it’s drowning me in lust
it’s draining me in love
i live to worship
i’m so low & of the ground
tell me how the sky
always hangs above
but still looks like the sea
crackling beside us
pour into me fasted
pollute me then purge me
i am only particles
& unwelcomed pressure
please protect me, your
Airplane arms
overextended obfuscating the boundaries of life
& death & dreams & ideation
orbiting my many moons
piling into me
& when your mouth moves towards mine
i remember piles of sandcastles &
corduroys & think
i will wake up now
on a beach
drinking decisions & rotting melon
/wondering\ if there is an
order to the oblivion

International women’s Day

For international women’s day
I celebrated the runs of my eyes
& the mouths of my feet
That swallowed many queens
& maidens & hysterical cunts
That swam like angels
Across teary seas & mossy lands
& landed me in a garden of wealthy cement;
To drown me in gray
& hide my triumphs & shrink my songs
& dull my dreams & starve my sobriety
To make room for
<men>
Where the pinnacle of their comfort
Is their path /:\ is our burden
& constant
Headline:
“The bitch in protest of asphyxiaition by the thick smoke of male comfort”
Sleeps neatly & safely on my dinner plate
Oh the city life ; oh the industrial age ; oh oh oh yes
“it’s a man’s world but it would be nothing, nothing without
Women & girls…”

At the dining table, we discussed my mother, the flowering slut

it was so fun /\at the dining table/\watching the birds /\float by

watching the/\poison pour/\little fingers/\never caught/\it
noise-cancelling nooses left on/\the tablecloth /\by the teaspoons/\it was all so /\
sticky

on their/\big mouths/\& little necks/\the neglect/\colored my blue/\painted my black//\all bruised
anything/\in the name/\
of family

for the love/\of g-d/\there is /\cohesion/\it was/\so fun/\when they/\called mom
a flowering slut/\what’s in a number/\she was eighteen eighteen eighteen/\they pointed/\all six fingers
so stern &/\dipped/\
in jam

said/\they said/\it looked/\just like her/\& i watched/\the birds float by
their shaky hands/\so sweet/\they said/\like candy/\& when i/\asked for some
they pointed

& they laughed/\“just like her mother’/\of course/\she wants a taste/\the flowering slut
but it was/\so fun/\at the dining table/\so close/\to our deaths/\watching their lives
slip by

From the Editor:

We hope that readers receive In Parentheses as a medium through which the evolution of human thought can be appreciated, nurtured and precipitated. It will present a dynamo of artistic expression, journalism, informal analysis of our daily world, entertainment of ideas considered lofty and criticism of today’s popular culture. The featured content does not follow any specific ideology except for that of intellectual expansion of the masses.

Founded in late 2011, In Parentheses prides itself upon analysis of the current condition of intelligence in the minds of these young people, and building a hypothesis for one looming question: what comes after Post-Modernism?

The idea for this magazine stems from a simple conversation regarding the aforementioned question, which drew out the need to identify our generation’s place in literary history.

To view the types of work we typically publish, preview or purchase our past issues.

Please join our community on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram at @inparenth.