Traveler -- Heather Sommer

Your first time out of the country
of your own skin, I didn't bring a map.

You always hated that I'd been lucky
enough to pick my way through streets

I couldn't pronounce to find cathedrals,
graveyards. If you were a city, you said,

I'd only like to know your suburbs.

If you were a city, I said, I'd like to know
your poor neighborhoods, you inner parts.

Read your graffiti. Drink your tap water.
Feel your smog and dirt stick to my sweat.

Hear your orchestra of sirens and gunshots.
I'd know which of your streets to walk.

If you were a city, I'd expect to be robbed.




10 Honest Thoughts On Being Loved By A Skinny Boy -- Rachel Wiley

1.
I say, 'I am fat.'
He says 'No, you are beautiful.'
I wonder why I cannot be both.
He kisses me
hard.

2.
My college theater professor once told me
that despite my talent,
I would never be cast as a romantic lead.
We do plays that involve singing animals
and children with the ability to fly,
but apparently no one
has enough willing suspension of disbelief
to go with anyone loving a fat girl.
I daydream regularly
about fucking my boyfriend vigorously on his front lawn.

3.
On the mornings I do not feel pretty,
while he is still asleep,
I sit on the floor and check the pockets of his skinny jeans for motive,
for a punchline,
for other girls' phone numbers.

4.
When we hold hands in public,
I wonder if he notices the looks --
like he is handling a parade balloon on a crowded sidewalk;
if he notices that my hands are now made of rope.

5.
Dear Cosmo: Fuck you.
I will not take sex tips from you
on how to please a man you think I do not deserve.

6.
He tells me he loves me with the lights on.

7.
I can cup his hip bone in my hand,
feel his ribs without pressing very hard at all.
He does not believe me when I tell him he is beautiful.
Sometimes I fear the day he does will be the day he leaves.

8.
The cute hipster girl at the coffee shop
assumes we are just friends
and flirts over the counter.
I spend the next two weeks
mentally replacing myself with her
in all of our photographs.
When I admit this to him
we spend the evening taking new photos together.
He will not let me delete a single one of them.

9.
The phrase "Big girls need love too" can die in a fire.
Fucking me does not require an asterisk.
Loving me is not a fetish.
Finding me beautiful is not a novelty.
I am not a fucking novelty.

10.
I say, 'I am fat.'
He says, 'No. You are so much more,'
and kisses me
hard.




I the Woman -- Sandra Cisneros

I'm
the Thursday
night
the poor
excuse
I am she
I'm dark
in the veins
I'm
intoxicant
I'm hip
and good skin
brass
and sharp tooth
against
the air
I'm lightbeam
no stopping me

I am
your temporary
thing
your own
mad
dancing
I am
a live
wildness
left
behind
one earring
in the car
a finger-
print
on skin
the black smoke
in your
clothes
and in
your
mouth




Here's What Our Parents Never Taught Us -- Shinji Moon

Here's what our parents never taught us:

You will stay up on your rooftop until sunlight peels away the husk of the moon,
chainsmoking cigarettes and reading Baudelaire, and
you will learn that you only ever want to fall in love with someone
who will stay up to watch the sun rise with you.

You will fall in love with train rides, and sooner or later you will
realize that nowhere seems like home anymore.

A woman will kiss you and you'll think her lips are two petals
rubbing against your mouth.

You will not tell anyone that you liked it.
It's okay.
It is beautiful to love humans in a world where love is a metaphor for lust.

You can leave if you want, with only your skin as a carry-on.

All you need is a twenty in your pocket and a bus ticket.
All you need is someone on the other end of the map, thinking about the supple
curves of your body, to guide you to a home that stretches out for miles
and miles on end.

You will lie to everyone you love.
They will love you anyways.

One day you'll wake up and realize that you are too big for your own skin.

Molt.
Don't be afraid.

Your body is a house where the shutters blow in and out
against the windowpane.

You are a hurricane-prone area.
The glass will break through often.

But it's okay. I promise.

Remember,
a stranger once told you that the breeze
here is something worth writing poems about.

1.
fuck off.


2.
realize that time machines
were built
for richstraightwhite men who have
never feared walking down
the street at night.


3.
smoke cigarettes with the luxury
of knowing that
they'll kill you someday.


4.
throw away your record players
and smash your vinyls into bits
and recognize
that the jagged edges are
nowhere near as rough as the past

(also, just fucking download spotify already).


5.
get dressed how you want
and eat what you want
and marry who you want
and learn what you want
just because you can.


6.
that whalebone corset looks
prettier tucked away
in the glass case of a museum
than it would wrapped around
your middle
squeezing the breath from your lungs
and the roses blooming in your cheeks.


7.
swallow pills instead of
biting your tongue.
you won't be left in the gutter
or locked away in a tower,
I promise.


8.
money was always
hard to come by.


9.
if you're unhappy with where
you are,
go.

we can fly, these days.


(x)