Tag: poetry

aSoSS 45 | Bewitched

a-spider-on-state-street Leave a comment

Where are you from?

Virginia. DC area, Arlington.

I’m sure you get this question a lot, but do you live close to the cemetery?

Uh, yeah I’d say it’s about a ten minute drive…

EECS Building, 3:30PM, 11/21/2024

i met you for the first time as a stranger. we talked about the weather and your father and the new prodigy and the death of our favorite restaurant, like we were seventeen again and you had crawled through my bedroom window and into my arms. as if the world had not stopped spinning, a planet so big and full it hurt to laugh. as if i am not sitting on your gravestone, a quiver in my lip and a tremor in my chest, whispering to the soil to keep you warm in place of me.

You’re gonna be the best—oh look! The sun is out!

AADL Downtown, 12:00PM, 11/12/2024

it was a weed. i wanted to call it pretty but it was a weed, a dandelion beaming with the blush of the sun. quick to bloom, quicker to rot. against all odds it has conquered the impossible, leaves outstretched in heavenly embrace. what wouldn’t a flower give to be appreciated? if i had the chance, i would sit on the cobblestone and watch it grow. if i had the chance, i would name it after you.

There are a bunch of spots down there, it’s like Hogwarts!

Nickels Arcade, 2:00PM, 2/2/2025

after Marty Rubin: “lies bewitch us, if we want to be bewitched”–

i have inherited an incurable insomnia from you, in the way your absence keeps me up at night. sleep is a luxury you have stolen–you leave me with nothing more than pity, a memory woven in moonlight and encased in spider’s silk: i closed my eyes and breathed a prayer and you were there, my voice a siren, your mouth a shipwreck. there are ninety-nine names for God and yours is not one of them.

~Sappy Daze~ Day 17

Sappy Leave a comment 
From A Poor Secret Admirer Probably 

I’m determined to become rich 
with loving memories of you and I.

Unlike money, love can’t be measured, 
so prove you love me 
with a savings account 
of romantic adventures:

Front-row seats to a symphony 
of your snores and whispers. 

A limited edition perfume 
of your morning breath. 

A proposal so sweet 
it’s topped off with a ring pop. 

A honeymoon lavishly decorated 
with your goofy smile.

Yes, I confess I’m a gold digger. 
I’m greedy to live a broke life with unbroken love.

If you’re okay with that, 
won’t you be my lover, 
my clearance aisle breadwinner?

- Sappy

Capturing Campus: Hummingbird

EKArts Leave a comment

Hummingbird 

what must it be like to know someone?

not their favorite color or where they went to high school or where they want to retire or how they like their scrambled eggs on any given Sunday

but the texture of their skin

the patterns on their fingertips

born in the womb of their mother

the webbing and weaving 

are they high-strung or laid back?

with skin that sags around soft eyes

and peach fuzz

molded lips that taste of

dark-roasted coffee 

and the beating in their chest like a hummingbird 

when I press my ribs against theirs, my hip bone against theirs

we make a sculpture that breathes and pours

with sweat and some saccharine 

pleasure in the moment 

a pulsing and pressure

the roughness of legs

shaved two days ago

the bowing of their side and the curve of their arms 

bracing and borrowing glances

eyes closed, mouth wide

taking honeysuckle and morning dew

speaking only of cardamom and chamomile

whispering of rapture

to be enchanted in a body

to feel, to know

aSoSS 44 | Freckles

a-spider-on-state-street Leave a comment

Nice nails!

Thank you, they’re for Valentine’s Day!

[…]

South Quad, 1:00PM, 2/3/2025

skip the middle man, shall we? there is nothing left to say; i have torn the dictionary apart searching for the words to give you. entrust to me your heart and let me cast it in gold, so it may be preserved for the world to admire. one soul to another, without syllable nor stress, for this is the gift of a language repossessed. temple to temple: we are mothers kneeling and mothers weeping, hands clasped and prayers unanswered. how can we be damned when we have each other? your eyes tell me it does not matter; this altar holds enough room for two.

I think about you a lot. What does that make us?

Alice Lloyd Hall, 4:00PM, 12/8/2024

i can feel the melody of your thoughts through the heat of your touch–an excellent conductor, in more ways than one–your pulse rippling but not breaking the surface, a swordfish streamlined against the ocean. everything we have to say has already been written above, a cosmic braille blotted by the sun. you wear the stars as a cape; i trace the freckles on your back, brush tears away from your cheek. don’t you see? a night sky splashed across your skin. a kiss made salty by sweaty lips, fingertips charting the seas you once commanded. you have been graced with ethereal beauty. in the nowhere there is only the rush, the crash, the silence.

I’ve got no one to cuddle with, [so] I’m gonna buy a body pillow…

Stockwell Hall, 12:00PM, 1/9/2025

a seed of resolve: i am going to love you to the moon and back. you protest weakly, the way a tired child insists on staying awake. do not set your words on me, for i know your tongue too well. i will wrap my arms around you and never let go, until the daylight bleeds into darkness and you fall asleep, the thump in your chest in line with the echo in my eardrum. it will take more than death to separate us. atrophy or infinity, whichever comes first.

~Sappy Daze~ Day 16

Sappy Leave a comment 
From Your Secret Admirer Probably

I like your smile:
the way it crinkles your eyes at the end
like an elderly person’s 
despite your youthful face. 

It makes me dream 
we’ll grow old together,
like your overworn white tee 
that I wore too:
I liked how the shirt smelled of you.

Your scent makes me hungry.

I can keep my hunger at bay by listening 
to my favorite piece on repeat: 
a cacophony of a symphony 
performed by our starving bodies. 
The melody of our groans and 
the rich vibrato of our stomachs
harmonize beautifully. Our laughter: 
the percussive and catchy beat.

I think we should become music majors. 

That way our starvation for 
one another will forever 
play in a cannon 
more famous than D.

- Sappy

Crooked Fool: Are you angry yet?

Cydney Marie Leave a comment

Witness.

I was young, crooked femme, buzzing with energy, a nova of anger that was pathologized, bad-ified, otherized, punished…

A performer adapting to the endless energy and life force late-stage capitalist performing arts charge as the price of admission to a club that will blacklist without hesitation. I was easy to work with. Disciplined. Energized regardless of fatigue, a vessel down to my fingertips, twisted body best when unnoticed and unclaimed.

I am a rebel in circus garb, prepared for the tower to fall, knowing my role when it happens.

A clown questioning the colonized, controlling, punishing logics of the state, somehow more threatening in a red nose, but not always thought of as such.

Arlecchino, Brighella, Colombina, Pierrot surviving, working, playing my way through a system designed to keep me wanting, needing.

The crooked, hunchbacked witch who served literal communion to an actual demon in the scariest place there was. The gods rewarded me with a red nose and a spine full of titanium so that eyes, breath, spine will forever be grounded and protected in the act of cursing systems that need to crack, crumble, re-puzzle.  

But remember, it’s just a show…

I am the deformed artist who was told by a psychic that I mastered dark magick in a past life and by a spiritualist reverend that even the darkest creature goes to the light.

I am the one who spent years seeing THIS quilted together in dreams, and now feeling the living, pounding, vital force in those hazy green, buzzing and burning images come to life.

I dance in darkness, a ghost in the making, a demon falling madly in love with my mangled form, the footsteps in the night, screaming the angry children out of sleep because they are the ones who know that something is not right, and that something is not them.

I am, apparently, The Bad, so why not play games with the worst of the worst, week after week?

And why not argue where I can? When nice accomplishes nothing, I can at least still play the game – wrong if I choose.

As an annoying clown once said to me, and as I once said to someone who talked down to me like I was a noisy 27-year-old child, cheating is a mode of play.

Apparently, there are those who genuinely hate crooked, hunchbacked witch clowns. And they’ll dress up their deep, burning hate like light, saying I’m sick, unfriendly, whatever, because they know they can’t say Bad.

Except now they probably can.

I will play the game with all the Bad ones, overdressing, playing ferociously, cheating if I have to. If they want a demon, I know a few. If they try to cut off my rough edges, I’ll crack their rigid walls and dance on the rubble, and everyone loves to dance. Eventually they’ll join.

Slainte to the Bad ones. When this ending happens and this tower crumbles, we will dance in the flames and build with our disfigured, tired bodies in our own image. The vengeful gods will die. And there will the demons be, in the light, turning to ghost with Mad, irrational love and screaming into the dark in joy and rage as our dance party goes on atop the elements that once made us. Who’s the demon now?

Are you angry yet?

You should be.