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April 12, 2023 Poetry

5 Poems

Catherine Spino

5 Poems photo

Rainbow Valley

You were coming down on shrooms the last time I saw you, face all elated and shiny like a mylar balloon. You were chattering on about Rainbow Valley. You went down an internet hole and now you know so much. You showed me a picture so I could understand. Neon colors sprinkled in the snow. Melted crayons on clouds. I tried not to look for the inevitable rot. It’s kind of beautiful, right? you asked me, soggy fruit loops slurring your words. You were always one to see the good in the bad. When we fucked, I came so hard I saw these multicolored orbs dancing/strobing in my retinas. Reds and oranges and blues and green fireworks against your cracked white ceiling pop rocks bursting all over my body teeth chattering. It was only then that I knew death could be stunning.

 

Source Of Truth

I open Instagram for the 23rd time today and read a friend’s essay. I wonder if this is the rest of my life: watching my friends create and write and move in between logging onto zoom meetings.

It’s the imposter syndrome, kid. My brain plays that sentence back like Larry David said it to me. Or my Papa. I went to school for theatre arts and when I’m too embarrassed to say “theatre arts,” I say “I tell stories” and take a long sip of whatever drink I’m holding.

Apparently your creativity is located in your sacral chakra, the same chakra that houses your sex drive. Maybe my IUD is giving me writer’s block. Every orgasm I am not having is a poem in process.

I am bloated with promise.

Jackson Pollock threw paint on a canvas and people call it impressive. When I write, it’s just poor grammar and groups of words quilted together from my iPhone notes section. Someone tells me not to store my works in progress on Google Drive. Big brother is watching. I am a D list horror film. At 7:30 pm I will stare blankly onto my screen, at 9:45pm I will talk myself out of masturbating.

When you are shifting your body out of a hard yoga position, smiling can help relax your muscles. I think this is bullshit.

I am a writer I am a writer I am a writer I am a writer I am a writer I am a writer. I type this out 10 more times into an Untitled Google Doc.

 

Throw Me To The Dogs

Chapped lips
Tongues touching

Frozen poles, frozen spit
Littered love

All over the baseball field
High as a home run

Slick saliva cementing our
Little league of lust

Bite my nipple
The one in front of my heart

Suckle on my A+ ambitions
Drain me of all my theatre kid dreams

Let me peak in high school
Let me die Most Likely to Become Famous

What am I but a
Piece of grey meat

Looking up at you from your
Cafeteria tray

I must taste so good
Don’t you think?

I’ll move through you
Like you moved through me

A tender violence,
Drops of blood dancing in the toilet bowl

What if we seasoned our dreams with shit
Would they grow bigger, taller then?

 

Mating Season

Dad told me it’s mating season for the coyotes
They get unreasonable, violent like storms

The way teeth catch on scorched dog skin
Peppered with paprika and burnt plastic

Spit your dreams into my mouth
So at least I can taste something true

Are your muscles tight like mine
when you hold your power in your fingers?

I don't want my words to be seen as a result of
too much tequila, too much rage against myself

My pencil case of pain that you saw as flesh
that held possibility, I had to store my bruises
somewhere

Who gave me that water bottle
It must’ve been someone kind

 

Hangnail

Splitting headache
Spandex snapping
on what was it you
said that night? After
you called me a
Bitch a wild thing before
I ran drunk on flames
into your shower stars
pouring out of my eyes.

Behind a velum of
vulnerability you told
me you valued my
point of view my ass in
your hand a low hanging
fruit. You left me hollow
like a pumpkin, smashed
pavement between my gums,
no wisdom left in my teeth.

Fuck you but I’ll admit
I played with my
claws out. Persephone worked
half time communing with hell and
coming up to have tea when the
sky was yellow. All I wanted
was to mold a hell out of
heaven, make it more human.

I once wrote a note
with one line for every
man I fucked fuck I
can’t find it now did I dream it? and
ours was about caged two lions
facing each other swatting like
terrible siblings or maybe it
was something about two people pointing
guns at each other a shootout a Marina
Abramovic performance (we both have Leo
in our major placements) no matter
either way we were always too scared to
consummate the chaos. We much preferred
tonguing the open mouth sores that tasted like
loose change and never wanted to heal.

 

image: Jean-Léon Gérôme


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