Excerpt from They Don’t Make Sunday Because of God
6.
I buy hydrangeas as proof
and because pinks appear quilted
I know they hold water
as I myself.
7.
I sit with six white men agonising
the placement of a comma. They pity it
for meaning break. We torture choice
of font, too fat. I am somewhere else, too
light like Lexend. Minutes: The morning will hit
and we will lose it.
8.
I feel nervous. So I spoon tender steak, beef salt
savoury enough to ignore small touch. I know
you’re not flirting. Or you are. Or you
are describing love like the mole
behind his knee. Silence as we make
graves of soy sauce.
9.
I dream my aunt folds hands to hymnals
to palp the frond in my pelvis.
I say: So, Is it a child
or Is it a tumour? Sage as wisdom
green, she already knows
they are my mothers cells the same.
10.
I am choked with options, or
no options at all. Poet, grief and love are
synonyms; to know and to do foil each other
and I think now I’ll change my life.
Quit smoking.
11.
I thank fate with a cigarette
for my spin instructor and the woman who
wraps my hands in hers. We scatter
like sheds of cocaine on my dresser.
My people are not ones for touch
when in feeling.
12.
I want booze and distraction so
I tell him the Camden Head had a name
like a premonition. That growth is no better
than a selfish grapefruit hiding juice
in its pips. He asks what we are doing here.
And I say: just making sure.
13.
Manufactured By Pfizer, the P is silent
until lids loosen in their cage.
I ask him: When will you make
dreams come true? He tells me prayers
are for the woke. That they don’t make Sunday
because of God.
Dictionary
after Tiphanie Yanique
Body (noun): a thing to be desired. Collection
of organs strung together by thin layers of fat and skin.
Predominantly an object to men. What one must give
to husband, predominantly. The central part
of something. Skeletal. Predominantly controlled
by the state. That is, the husband one must take. That
is, pre domination, one has self control.
But only when so permitted.
To get bodied (verb): of Beyoncratic origins.
As in, Beyoncé thought a creative way to say
fuck me Jay Z. Ingenious use of lyric innuendo.
As in, please get me bodied, woman whispers
to man. To beg in a way only men can imagine.
As in, my first lyrics were written by men.
To body (verb): to break out in fight. To squeeze eyes
to matter. To stretch skin to cobweb. To slam against
the broad pavement of another’s chest. As in,
what my mother endured. As in, ceilings are to heads
what chambers are to trample.
Body count (slur): a thing to be ashamed of.
A key that opens many locks is a good key;
a lock that opens by any key is a shitty lock.
As in, my best friend had only three men
and no women. As in, my priest called me
a whore and I am a terrible Catholic girl. As
in, my Doctor asks in that six: is there a reason
for so many partners? I think,
for a woman,
sex is something to be feared.
_____
Emily is a writer based in London. Her socials are @emwrote (X) and @emilyraylot (Instagram).
These poems were chosen by Anthropocene Guest Editor HLR.
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