MNEMOSYNE
NEW WORKER wakes up in the Angel’s mouth
Not this shit again
The Capital Machine
is infected with lambs
and NEW WORKER is Angel’s
favorite dog
Inside the mouth there is absolutely nothing doing
Her arms crooked staffs
Slouching between incisors
Angel’s is no jaw of Reason
and NEW WORKER refuses to be
dissolved for miracles
Industry ties her up Angel eats her up
Mouth keeps moving
but will not form words
She has Work to do She only ever has her Work
This does not count as paid time off
NEW WORKER wants to be more than dead
What a wet wish
Tender-terror The mind is
a heaven of esurient flame NEW
WORKER ambles marionette-like
slipping over Angel’s thick tongue
Free Radical
in a matrix
of sound
Conduit
Carniverous
Power plant
machine NEW WORKER
wipes saliva from her hair Smooths
out her eel suit Shocks herself
Drops her fangs
Plans yet another grand escape
Temperance Aghamohammadi is an Acolyte of the Exquisite. A trans Iranian-American poet, medium, and critic, she is the author of BATTALION SHAPED GIRL (DISCOUNT GUILLOTINE, 2025) and Behnt (New Delta Review, forthcoming), selected by Dorothea Lasky as the winner of The New Delta Review Chapbook Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, New England Review, Fairy Tale Review, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. She is an associate editor at RHINO Poetry and received the Claudia Emerson scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Hailing from the Northeast, she currently haunts the Midwest while pursuing a PhD in Literature.