[If the future is a fetish]
excerpted from Without Them I Am Still A Mother
If the future is a fetish. If my pussy is a sick fixation. If my pussy can’t be fixed. For like the field
it has no doors. For like a business it has several partners. For like the future I’m a port. If the
future dreams of pussy. If the future is a tentacle emerging from my body. If the future is an
ocean floor. For X is a tentacle pulsing. For J is a tentacle pulsing. If I reproduce as a compulsion.
There is me & there is me & there is me & when my child finally arrives with organs pulsing. If I
have my child then tape up every hole. If my memory is a stranger. If they never leave me for
they do not enter. There is me & there is me & I will reassemble. If not all departures are
abandonments. If my child is healthy she will grow. If I am generous & recognize you thirst for
things I cannot know. I will reassemble. I am branded by no letters. If they leave. I let them.
**
[The jugular is a substantial vein]
excerpted from Without Them I Am Still A Mother
the jugular is a substantial vein I bring I bring a blade
I bring death is not a public space death is no one’s
private joke I will not condone you celebrating any decomposing body
or the recreation of a body like my own when I wake up
from a dream & finally I’m queer when I’m never going back to sleep
I will not romanticize the hollow of my throat licked
by Xanax 2mg like marrow from a bone the jugular engorged with blood
the testicles engorged my memory rejects your sperm
my jugular rejects the blade I pledge allegiance to tumescence
make my life a public space look my recreation
a parade I hoist my lovers like balloons reject the possibility of weight
**
Elegy For My Bush & Other Lushness
i love being thin enough to slice of course you die from the pocketknife slender
bloodline trailing towards the floor my right-now lover is a horse decaying in the center
of the road who runs over a horse who sucks the entrails from his butt leaving him
a tender husk we fall asleep carved-out we eat food that turns our feces green
we are very regular i carve him out of every private dream i kiss a girl he doesn’t know
i wake adorned in piss & can’t remember who i love all my former fucks refuse
to be decrepit they shed their hair inventively they buy silver shoes with no strings
in bed i map out ways to modify my body i’ll wear my bowels as a scarf i’ll wax
the backwoods of my crotch into a strip dewy steak to dig your teeth into
here is where the aesthetician skins my cunt with tiny licks here is where my lover licks
the puckered skin around my cunt a little too far to the right though i don’t touch myself
enough to be a guide if you could please ravage this succulent valley if you could please
suck this ravishing valley i value my rapture the curdled scum the female form
does not supply a fill the female form a bucket in the sand granules delicious wet
my lover’s penis swells inside me like a cheeseburger digesting painfully i vomit
up the shape of a girl he doesn’t know how she tastes in a dark room
i am not the void i own nothing of the void i own nothing i have vomited it up
here our dwindled bodies here my skin recoiling here my puss a neat frontier
**
YUM
my rapture
mmmm a heath bar shake from Baskin Robbins
is the most
caloric beverage in America
according to Eat This, Not That
eat this: my pussy
on a good day
is still arid
edible matter
the most wholesome things
are not always the most toothsome
there is no such thing as an animal
not transformed
by all of its encounters
find me a body
still intact
YUM Kristeva
mmmm my mother
everyday i eat my unborn child
as a light snack
**
What I Mean Is Poem But I’m Sleepy
no one loves me so i’ll write a pome
got home drunk & wrote a pome
smoked a cigarette as an accessory
someone put my pome in a gallery
this pome in minor key
my heart a feral peach
this pome a fuzzy caterpillar
maybe just a worm
at the bar you’re sitting
with a handsome man i’ve never met
in the bathroom
i’m asserting how i’m ugly
lipstick on my teeth
lipstick on my dirt pome
no one text my pome
back
my pome thirsty
for a hunk of flesh
when i don’t eat
i want to kiss whoever
sitting next to me
at least i can come home
to write pome
i love myself
with a fresh hand
i taint my fingers
with tobacco as a fast excuse
to stand
my lips belooooooong
in a pome
my ass belooooooong
on your lips
i will violate myself
in every pome
& still be safe
no one sleeps beside me
but my words
i will fuck my pome
as you probably expect
i stay sadder
than i ever were
**
SARAH SGRO currently lives in Oxford, Mississippi, where she serves as Poetry Editor for the Yalobusha Review and co-hosts the Broken English Reading Series. She is from New York and previously worked as an editorial assistant for Guernica. Her poetry appears in Muzzle, TYPO, glitterMOB, Horse Less Review, Deluge, the minnesota review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Word Riot.
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