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JOANNA C. VALENTE

Picture


I'm Writing a Poem About You in a Shitty Starbucks 
in Midtown
When I told you I wanted to hate
you, I wasn’t lying. It’s the fortieth 

anniversary of someone’s 
marriage, the years bleeding

into each other like veins 
falling apart after taking 

too many selfies 
& realizing I am not a red

head & you will never love
me & I will never be
Mama. 

-

In Boston, a man sat for five 
hours in the Worcester library, 
waiting for pretty girls

to operate a new body. He asked
J why she was alone because pretty

girls should never be alone & she
was too pretty for him 

to concentrate & she should take
a walk with him in the park & 

all good girls are from somewhere 
else & where are you from, honey,

you must be from somewhere too 
beautiful to be real, he said, where

humans eat their young & stuff the bones
in a giant crate in the earth. J knows

no one really lives & this is how
she will die.

-
  
You took my face in yr hands
& put it on & said that I 
am not a human. So I believed you
  
mostly because our hands
are the same size.

Sometimes, at night, I wish
for someone to break into me--

stab my body before my body
turns on itself, before the waiter

writes a ghost story on a napkin
before you become angry with

your dead & complain of hunger
on the beach--

they are still dead & they are still
your parents. There is no

gravity in you & whose heart
is on trial anyway? 

Your Body Doesn't Matter
If the dead never dissolve,
they must float

from Mars to Jupiter 
blossoming into new life: 

bees, tritium, woman’s rib
& live off a feast 

of bionic hearts crystallizing 
into brain matter, surrendering 

to choking—no rehearsal of 
minds—no collecting of seashells
  
because we are afraid of
our feelings when there is

no later—a dream
of rebirth? There are none

in a bar called Sea Witch 
in Brooklyn in house gin in drowning

in discarded deer husks merging
on the BQE with hands everywhere

inside kidneys inside uterine wall
birthing ghosts without a back story--

inverted cunt devouring this earth,
these undead—scientists were wrong

about how to supersede time 
& space & light, how becoming

takes longer than being alive:
the hands crushing you into love

that you didn’t want & I told
mother I would become the most

harmless thing in the world--
there is no universe.
I ONLY BELIEVE IN PSYCHICS WHEN THEY TELL ME SOMETHING GOOD WILL HAPPEN
It’s 11:38 PM outside in the garden 
overflowing with couples 

complaining about their spouses
& using the weather to talk about
  
their feelings as if it’s a good idea
to learn braille just to touch

another person without letting go
of all your secrets at once like

opening a jar full of mosquitoes
& now you forgot what desire is 

for other people because after three
weeks, you don’t remember how

to use words to name how sex
on the patio furniture felt in February,

how your mind kept racing to remember
all of the Spanish words you learned

in 9th grade & K was asleep when
you wanted to have sex that last

time. We were out there for too long,
staring all night into woodless forest

in 21st century America when Brooklyn
is metal & nobody & words are for

other people not us, who learn more
words for all of the feelings that

consume us, that we can’t see
like the ghosts in your grandmother’s

basement & where are your ghosts
when you need them?


JOANNA C. VALENTE is sometimes a mermaid and sometimes a human. She is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014) and received her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College. Her second collection Marys of the Sea is forthcoming from ELJ Publications in 2016. Some of her work appears, or is forthcoming, in The Huffington Post, Columbia Journal, Similar Peaks, The Paris-American, The Atlas Review, The Destroyer, among others. In 2011, she received the American Society of Poet’s Prize. She founded Yes, Poetry in 2010,and is the Managing Editor for Luna Luna Magazine. Her ghost resides at her website: joannavalente.com.
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