Joanna C. Valente
When You Ask Me How I Am and I Almost Tell You, I Haven’t Killed Myself Yet
Another outside
my body
over it all steam
and half suns, full moons
huddled together
to transform our bodies
into a single
solar eclipse, tiny invisibilities
settling somewhere above the ocean
rebellious waves learning
speech, vowels like ours
and we call it semantic
relational
and this is how the ocean
started to pray, singing waves
and for a second I
feel that desperate need to open
my fingers
and stuff the ocean inside my
legs and mouth
preserve through
a spell to take my body
instead, all these people
blowing smoke
cramming themselves
inside the ocean, the waves,
us
and these bones we know
will be taken by men
and made into an office building,
automated waste
leveraged into contractual efficiency
but we can’t have that
not with the night pooling like blood
around us,
and we are stopping in closed bookstores
saying thank you
before news of the dead
our own dead, our future
find us, haunt us
under a paper sky with another moon
we don’t recognize
I tell you it’s hard for me to reconcile
our moons, some alien stardust
a space we remember but can’t see
and these waves not being
waves anymore but what use is there
to mourn what hasn’t happened yet
and all the words like thank you
that will happen in between
that will be the only thing to matter
when the waves stop crashing.
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. They are the author of Sirs & Madams, The Gods Are Dead, Marys of the Sea, Sexting Ghosts, Xenos, No(body) (forthcoming, Madhouse Press, 2019), and is the editor of A Shadow Map: Writing by Survivors of Sexual Assault. They received their MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Joanna is the founder of Yes Poetry and the senior managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine. Some of their writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Them, Brooklyn Magazine, BUST, and elsewhere. Joanna also leads workshops at Brooklyn Poets. joannavalente.com / Twitter: @joannasaid / IG: joannacvalente / FB: joannacvalente
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