THREE POEMS
them IV
: I am on the bus & thinking about a travel poem I have to write. Rani says that all poetry has at least a bit of loss in it & I don’t think they’re wrong //
: a poem is an archive of lost things & I am angry about it. // At the gay event tonight everyone was so fucking happy & I was just bored // I am burned out from gay happiness
: the truth is I am losing faith in words: they are light & airy & I am in need of something heavier & more acidic. I am bitter & pissed off all the time & guess what I’m not
: fucking happy about it. I am tired that my memory is an archive of lost things & bad sex / tired of memory like a poem // when I was little I was told I could grow up to be
: anyone I wanted—well I wanted to be a lesbian / so it feels like God fucked me
right at the start with that one. Rani tells me there’s still time for a transformation
: but a lot of me doesn’t buy it. I look in the mirror & don’t see much more than a sad / sad / hairy man with bags under his eyes // sometimes I feel I’m making it all up
: as I go along. I feel invisible / or maybe more like I am wearing a man-mask
I can’t take off my face. What’s that saying I keep misremembering?
: If a fag falls down in a forest / & no one is around to see them in drag /
were they ever really queer / at all?
them vi
: I’m at another reading in the cramped library of the Betsy Hotel / right off Ocean Drive / it is impossibly hot outside / half-naked people in flip flops and coming to and from the beach //
: Freesia and Jade drove me here / because I can’t drive. / I’m not sure what we talked about in the car / but on the way back it was crossword puzzles. The poet reading is Steve Kronen.
: When he finished we all sat down to talk. It / was a small reading. Maybe less than ten people in a little room. Lately I have been party to many small readings / and they are the best kind.
: We got Freesia to read something / just a little something / now that it was all over / so she leans against the counter and reads a poem off her phone
// and the room is not a room anymore / it is a listener—
and the books, they are listening,
and the shelves / and the light slanting
through the blinds, and the walls, they too
catch their breath
Mall of the Americas
I remember at the mall being children /
running around the carpeted sitting areas
and the wonder of the food court
the something / off-putting about mall santa
and going into shops browsing trinkets
waiting for my mother
// playing negotiator
with her in front of the toy store
the politics / of playing with cousins
of hide and seek where we were not
supposed to
the nervous vendors protecting their kiosks
// we would hide
in the stores we knew we’d be shooed
away from
we were the rowdy screaming children
I remember wondering
what was Victoria’s secret / fascinated by the
dresses in the windows // the poster women
larger than life the lacy bras and the
poses I knew I was
embarrassed to imitate in public
these were the bodies
I dreamed for myself / in the dreams
I did not tell myself I had
// those mannequins in high heels after school
How
could I have known this too was an institution /
the people draped in the pretty things
in a maze of the potentially mine
// a language of
thin bodies and pale skin and soft fabrics and
me / learning what a body is and who it belongs to
learning what to value
what to covet / what to wish
was my own
Sophia Pupo
Sophia is a transfemme nb poet locked in perpetual conflict with her stubble. She is pictured here with Luna, the cat she babysits. She is allergic to cats.
Twitter: @sophieontheweb