SEXTET Issue II: Traces showcases writing exploring the marks that we as humans leave in our wake: footprints in the snow, the enduring warmth of an embrace, the hollow left in the seat of your favourite armchair.

Mayah Monet Lovell

DEVOTION REGATHERING

kin scented ornaments evoke promise
my language hardens under her breath like

ritual begging again in vicious
fight our words dance open my body arc

in distant fog. I was taught to desire treasure space
longing pressed in want our shining armor

ancient wisdom rebuild our bodies scene
until song releases new lineage

crone shapes of fury new positions
cast unbelievable dreams these magics

have stories to teach lunar tongue in tongue
i arch for hers like moon’s tide returning

our omens our dead our memory our
love’s fire protected. we inspire foreshadow

as great apothecary knows of fruit
buried web what divine oddly comes in you? this

feasts psyche feels our bodies dust from waves
pull my holes open with fervent hunger

come wander our gifts make rich boundaries
come mist tend our bodies intimate space

we welcome reasoned guidance let our rare
prayers ooze transformation with tender

cave echoes under her fingers call
the Beauty of lust sows us a blessing

where seeds of nature and Love collide
where conflict dissipates in lords prayer

you came to me like ocean takes pleasure
inside a shell. the pitch of natures math

washes our landscape. resonate Love through
vibrating spirits, our bodies pulsing drum

ride me like prophecy soaked knowing.
to Love you deeply returns promised land.

ancient wisdom releases minds alike
trace my lineage in your consumption

our honest tension bbbr reak s free of cages
fires foreshadow true inspiration

as i yearn air spills from my instrument
harmonized nature is how we will win

dances give crone shapes of fury
rides her thigh like prophecy, soaked in

knowing way to battle mirrored cast
spit-slick our moans spiral wild as clouds

DEVOTION LET: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SONNET

horizon collapses
where ocean meets heaven
you are my guilty summation.
time remothers prayer
like a newborn crown
our tender machine
waltz pearls of sweat
in Beauty’s hand
shinies grow a sister’s luck
i take money the womanly way
pucker towards your
silkened mouth. brush
stroke my makers body
each line, sculpt my rebirth

Mayah Monet Lovell is a Black lesbian transdisciplinary artist and scientist from DC. She is an editor and curator of dykes day and underground paper dykes City Dispatch (Hermetic State), author of Phanto (Nueoi Press, 2023), Be Dead (Test Pie Press, 2025) and forthcoming title with Discount Guillotine (Mar 2026). Her performance and visual work have shown at Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery, Transformers, Rhizome, Vox Populi, people’s living rooms, and elsewhere. Connect with Mayah on Instagram or at mayahmonet.com