A Letter to Joan Murray

Is it fair to say I love you?

No, then is it fair to say that you are my exact kind of woman?

My feelings for you are fauns- erotic only in their unrequited fantasy

I find myself fingering the corners of your sky,

Hearing you ring,

Feeling you move in my lower intestine.

My sexuality is fogged up with teenage hormones and unread warnings,

My vision is fogged up with breasts growing out of your short hair, your nipples lilies,

your poems unread.

You are the unsung hero of ejaculatory mist.

You see, I am numb, but feeling what I can.

You see, I am the bystander to breasts.

You and I, we are written in the stars, young and dumb but artful.

I think I see myself in you

I think I see myself in hatred, in longing, in words.

There’s nothing like lingerie made of lilies,

But I’ll be damned if another yearbook goes up my anus.

You were signing my walnut bikini and I was aching, stuttering, living.

I am far too profound to understand the blueprints of the architect.

Once the price of lamb chops goes down, I think I will know

I rhyme for you,

Running my eyes around the rim of the void, feeling for a semblance of sense.

I rhyme for you,

Not a conscious rhyme but a subconscious rhyme,

One that takes for granted your understanding.

I believe that we both have the disposition of a poet,

It is indistinct at best.

(our kind lives on)

Read my words and envision the coffee pot, unholy in its resemblance to a chicken nugget

I stand on tables to show my rampant distaste for all things January.  

Do you feel me moving in the tips of your breasts, threatening to break free?

A lover for another lifetime.

Perhaps one day I will find you, and you will find me, and by a simple glance we will know that what we have shared beyond the grave is sacred.

A Call to Those Who Are Wild

My body is made of bird songs

I fly to a dirty airport on an airplane made of discarded tampons

She licked the blood off my scalp and her tongue was cool, like a kitten

I think being in love gave me some issues, some poetic issues

I fight in a boxing ring with seventeen fuchsia monkeys

I’m the oldest, I’ve been living myself to sleep the longest

You are a bracelet made of snake teeth and I wear on my upper thigh

How can I learn to love you when your heart is sunglasses and a Star Wars t-shirt?

It’s vindictive, almost,

When sixteen mini donuts became the symbol of our love

When sixteen mini donuts became fireworks coming out of our conjoined throat.

I extend my arms and scream you a love song

I extend my bellybutton and stop writing poetry

I extend my inner-ear and become a pasty peanut

I extend you, I love you

I look down on the bruise on the tip of my larynx

(I think it’s growing)

I bought six gold buttons and gave none of them to you

I bought the colour purple and painted stripes onto my knuckles  

I carved your initials into my skin and gave you the blood in twenty-seven different vials

I tire of you too, I hope you know that.

My first job was piercing belly buttons

I loved the skin of it all.

It’s always good to carry a pair of hyper-stylized, black booties in the gaps where your wisdom teeth should be

We were a purposeful overdose on laughing gas

And I loved it.

You told me that I could find you with Those Who Are Wild,

I told you I didn’t know where that was.

You told me it was the smudge of orange lipstick on my hand,

I told you I still didn’t know where that was.

You sighed,

West Virginia.

And I loved it

Caroline Sasso (she/they) is a poet, playwright, director, and actor. She is interested in reclaiming and democratizing exclusionary traditions in literature and the performing arts, particularly surrealism, poetic form, and Shakespeare. They believe in the value of shock and obscenity in art, and her pieces often include elements of body horror, camp, gore, horror cinema, and the grotesque. They are currently developing an adaptation of Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare’s bloodiest tragedy, set 100 years post-zombie-apocalypse. She is the author of the one act play Spaceships and Stardust and the chapbook Five Trains of Thought and an Apple Slice (Ugly Duckling Presse). They attend Stanford University and are working towards a B.A. in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing (Poetry) and Theater and Performance Studies on the Theater Making track. She is a YALDA Web Editor.