Image © Jane Flett 2015
| by Joanna C. Valente | October 26, 2015 |
SCUMBAG NATION
If you want to be
a woman, melt
cheddar cheese all over
your body until your body
becomes a river where dogs
piss when their owners
abandon them on sidewalk
curbs. Intention doesn’t
matter—all humans are
animals, especially
when pretending not
to have a face—remember
that time you got K so drunk
her eyes gleamed opaque as
twilight just so your hands
could touch her
while she slept without
a body?
I AM HOME ALONE ON A FRIDAY NIGHT BECAUSE NO ONE LOVES ME
text message 11:03 pm:
owl is watching me,
i spilled my gin inside my thighs
& pretend to sext a guy i met
on tinder
text message 11:05 pm:
does his face look like punched leather
or thin as guitar strings?
pics or it didn’t happen
text message 11:11 pm:
he told me to make a wish
for the world to end before midnight
i wonder if he thinks of me before he takes a shit,
if inside me feels like water boiling,
a mosh pit of sting rays
text message 11:35 pm:
dead men are the only men
who listen
text message 11:37 pm:
that must be why i’m in
buffering hell
text message 11:55 pm:
come over? let me know when
yr body is no longer
in yr house & no longer yrs
but someone else’s
__________
Joanna C. Valente is the Managing Editor for Luna Luna Magazine. She is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014) and The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), and received her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College. Her second full-length collection Marys of the Sea is forthcoming from ELJ Publications in 2016. She also has a chapbook, Xenos, forthcoming from Imaginary Friend Press. Some of her work appears in The Huffington Post, Columbia Journal, BORT Quarterly, among others. She founded Yes, Poetry in 2010. Her ghost resides at her website: joannavalente.com.
Jane Flett is an over-excitable pervert with a penchant for ridiculous metaphors and glitter. She’s won various awards, including Salt’s Best British Poetry (2012) and Wigleaf’s Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions (2014), but she’s still waiting to be presented with her honorary tiara and tankard of gin. When Jane’s not writing, she likes to play cello with Ambika in the riot grrl band Razor Cunts, teach creative writing courses through The Reader Berlin, run festivals, host queer events, and rollerskate down Tempelhof runways in hotpants. http://janeflett.com