Author: poetryfest

It was only the time of the month
the day we went shopping for a MALM flat pack, one hundred tealights,
a fluffy rug for my bedroom and a cheese grater,
I vomited IKEA meatballs onto an IKEA bed,
retching lumps of pretend meat and Lingonberry juice;
shit-coloured puke, prettying the white pillows.

Mum found a man with a dustpan, dressed in yellow and blue.
He fluttered around me like a blue-tit, swept up sick,
removed the duvet cover, like he’d seen it all before-
a monthly occurrence. She apologised repeatedly, twiddling her wooden pencil
as I writhed on the synthetic floor, my stomach being clawed apart,
Mum explained, by my ovaries.

She lifted me to my feet, and together we shoved our way
through IKEA’s spiral maze, followed yellow arrows to the Ladies;
where my pale face and inflamed eyes stared at me
through a wiped-clean TOREKOV mirror, complete with a £12 price tag.
Mum rubbed dribbles of sick from my chin and neck with toilet roll,
offered me an Ibuprofen, which I gulped down with warm water from the tap,

a Polo mint to hide the meaty stench. Vaseline for my lips,
and a brush of pink blush for my chalky cheeks.
They get easier, sweetie, she said, until the menopause…
She laughed and squeezed my shoulder, as pain shot through my spine,
and off we went again, walking round and round in circles,
through the one-way flow of IKEA, for two more hours of bloody shopping.

But really I think I just like myself
For the first time in 25 years
And this shit is wild

Like I used to introduce myself with sadness first
And now I lead with laughter
Because I’m laughing all the time

I stand on stage and ask strangers
To find delight in my bad dates
You need rain to make a rainbow
I need to crash a bachelor party in new orleans for the plot

My grandfather is trying to decide if I’m manic or just happy
I’m trying to convince him two things can be true at the same time

Now rewind and it’s a few months into living alone,
Putting bandaids on my broken heart

I decide I’m too comfortable falling asleep next to my vibrator
So I get on the apps
But it’s too soon

In come a string of faces I can’t see
Through the sting of my tears

Then I give up and make my tinder bio my venmo
And now I’m banned from tinder
And the cycle repeats itself
This time with charged batteries

So, I switch to bumble and meet B.
He’s tall, dark and mustachioed
My daddy issues personified

And maybe I should be embarrassed
that I’m closer in age to this man’s cat than him
But the sex is so good,
I’m trying to convince my therapist this is actually healing
Like I’m learning a lot about my attachment style

It’s true and it’s stupid, we can laugh, you should laugh
But in all honesty, it gave me the space to demote romantic relationships
And focus on more important things – like literally anything else

Now I’m writing a book
Getting promoted
And going back to school

I’m building community
And collecting friends
Like grandparents
Collect stamps

Pan over manchester Tennessee and you’ll find me and my best friend
Stoned, twirling with the trees

I found god, and her name is the profound depth of female friendship (or barbie)

Morgan puts on coffee when I text I’m on my way
I drop off popcorn and brownie mix when Meg texts she got her period
We turn water into vodka
pull the moon down with the bounce of our ass
And still make it to an 8 am meeting dressed in slacks

I’m on my hot girl summer
Bad bitch act

I am floating in an abundance of love
Water flooding in from every direction

And yes, Ted Lasso is the only lover I talk about on stage
But it’s not because I’m oh so in love with the way he gives me drugs

It’s because I spent the better part of three years
Walking around the internet calling my ex the love of my life
Now they are my ex
And I have to keep living my life

So, I only want to do exactly what I want to do

I’m still me and some things never change
I’m still compelled to make art
Out of the paper mache of my heart
But I can’t stand to make anymore declarative statements I think I might regret

I don’t want to write a love poem, unless it’s about my friends

Yes – I want to love, but I no longer dive head first into the concrete hoping for water

I’m living fast and loving slow
Because I refuse to get swallowed looking
For acceptance and validation between someone else’s legs
And I refuse to critique the crazy ways I’ve put myself back together again

I’m scared that I’m a narcissist
But really I think I just love myself
Quirks and all
For the first time in 25 years

He and Jesus bend their kneesus,
and pray to God who always pleasus,
they kneel on the rug in flowers and treesus, and
when the poet bends, he always wheezus, but God just smiles, and so does Jesus

The bold man burns
wire, purple fire
tips over a bucket full
of water with a garden hoe

The bold man jumps
over the pit
brown brick crumbles
the fire crackles
We have to clean the gutters

The bold man wanders
through the forest
of his backyard
grass tickling his knees,
black smoke climbing the trees
faster and faster

The bold man wonders
who called the cops,
doesn’t worry though, as they
are friends of the family
their eyes like fireflies as they watch
the heat burn bright green

The bold man washes
his hands in dirty water
drops hot wire, fire gold
copper spools spitting
tobacco in his bucket

The bold man whispers
of how to make an extra dollar
I work long hours, he tells
our friends of the family, I am tired

The bold man smells of
sap, crispy wood, fog lights, fresh grass
embers land, he is feral
jumps into the pit,
stripping and screaming

Burn the house down,
the neighbor’s house too
the cops won’t care
they are friends of the family
I bet we can burn them too

Her expertise
was pasta, “shells”
she made by-hand forming
dough over the joint
of her left thumb.
Last door in the hallway,
a sleeping porch,
was Jimmy’s bedroom
in the house
on Roosevelt Avenue.
Screened-windows
on two sides
left open on purpose
for any chance
of a breeze
on a Fresno night.
After her youngest boy
double-crossed her
& moved out,
She renovated the room
for food preparazione,
To do her baking.
Like all six of her sons,
he married a woman
who was not Italian.
She was consoled
when making pasta
on the bread-board,
like she used to do
in her mother’s cucina.
Sacks of plain flour
& semolina on the table
covered in cotton cloth,
a rolling pin, and spoons.
She crafted flat noodles
with a pasta-machine
brought from Italy.
Meatballs & marinara sauce
she made with fresh lamb
from the butcher shop,
& tomatoes from her garden.
Easter, she made cookies.
Dough-wrapped hard-boiled eggs,
with glaze & sprinkles.
Her Christmas cookies,
the same without the egg.
The only store-bought pasta
she would ever consider
spending money on
at Piemonte’s Grocery
were tiny stars.
Stars, made celestial
with the addition of butter,
she served in a bowl
for lunch on Saturdays.

a chainsaw was medical
before it was used for lumber,
widening and chewing through
a mother’s pelvis
in an effort to guide her
child out.

this was safer, somehow,
than a cesarean section,
which were rarely successful
before anesthesia and proper
hygiene and yet,
a century after the retirement
of the chainsaw and generations
of medical advances
they still
almost killed my mother.

my temples throb
and temperature rises thinking
of her returning
every day for a
week in searing pain,
hallucinating and
fainting in the lobby
after the smelling salts
roused her, they sent
her home.
my breath retreats
and shakes my spine thinking
of them
scraping
out infection, and the
sponge they left
inside her weeks ago
without time for anesthesia,
newborn Lilia
somehow sleeping peace

fully through her screams.
generations of medical
advances for moments
like this.

lilies were sent to her
room in pungent waves of ginger,
gold and white
sickening her
in a morphine haze.
they were moved but
she could still smell them
across the hall. lilies
are now forbidden
from entering the house.

My father is weak
from the pool,
from this disease that almost everyone
hasn’t heard of.
I.B.M.
I rub the towel
over the sides of each arm
left
and then
right.
I don’t ask
if he wants my help.
I silence his no
because water droplets turn
into slippery puddles.
into he slipped,
and then slipped away…
The air is hot enough to soak up the wetness,
but I keep blotting his skin.

I wish I had a bosom
I would not put my fishing lures there
Rather, money from a friend for dope or rent
folded like an origami chicken so it would poke and itch
not slide to my belly button
A stash for Belle Lettres, you know, notes from foreign
lovers signed in lipstick kisses

I would need cleavage like suspension bridges
holding things dry from places I’ve not yet been
I would name her, this place of nothing from nothing
more

Pilar, like Hemingway’s boat, a place of refuge
decorated in Christmas stockings, she would have
a temper, like seas trying to rid themselves of salt
and crustaceans

I would let Bob sleep here and cats purring like Bowie
when he was Ziggy stardust

This dress, Victorian, I find myself lanced in and its whalebone
corset cinched above and below hate and men

A bosom to be proud of on parade day
draped in rainbows coffins

We would drink coffee together on some tropical deck
Almost big enough for a kitten or a baby rabbit
to curl into
Something to always pet and pet and pet

My father stands in the hallway of
the house he still pays for
and begs me
to keep my dreams alive.
Callouses on his hands echo centuries
long-dead and smothered,
bloody aprons
railway spikes
dirt, soap, and disappearances.
He builds me
scaffolded on ice-cold overtime
slipped discs
refusing painkillers
for the sake of the suffering.
He offers me a pen and a history,
workers, mothers, swallowed by time and debt,
safe passage to wine-drunk libraries,
degrees in hubris and luxury
all the people who told us
dreams don’t pay unless you ask
nicely.
“Leave the subtlety
to the people
who pay to fix what is beneath them
and tell them
who you are.”
When I make it
and I will make it,
I’ll purchase him a good bed
my mother will rest in alone.

i have a box of nails in
the closet.
the box is tucked on
a shelf among the
bed sheets.
i take this box out
every couple of weeks.
only after
8pm.
that’s when i
give myself a
manicure.
i sit
in bed
with all
the lights off
and
i
glue.