Today Would’ve Been My Due Date and I’m Thinking About Blood
I knew what would happen
the first time I threw up after taking
my birth control. Bulimia did its best
to save me, and its best followed me
for decades. A secret: my womb
should be hostile but all it does
is grieve. Protesters outside the clinic
warned about some shit like this, asked
“what if your baby grows up
to cure cancer?” like the person I love
and I haven’t already lost enough
at the hands of white people
like me. And anyway, I could never
give them what they want: my baby
would have everything of mine
but my skin. This country knows nothing
of love. The girl in the gray chair
next to mine touched me before she left,
promised that abortion can also be a language
of protection. And it is. I love you,
and no one I’ve loved is still alive.
Triple Sonnet Written While Waiting for Apple to Develop a Bi Flag Emoji
I didn’t come out so much as I trimmed
my nails and allowed my tongue to begin
dreaming. But even with orgasms ordaining
my throat, I questioned my gayness: could I still
imagine surrendering, after everything,
to a penis, its wiry hair, wrinkled skin, sweaty little
face—? No. Instead of an answer, when I am
naked next it is between heaps of thigh pressed
against my ears tighter and tighter until
I’m a pit of mulch, warm thick humming
earth where no one can touch me,
where I’ve always confused whose what
is whose, which yelps are mine, whose
is the body I curled into each night
before a dick and its man split me
open into a life beyond repair. Maybe
that’s the problem—my lovers and I,
we have all wished torture upon someone
who’s been inside us, and maybe I’ve always seen
too much of myself inside any woman
I swore I truly loved. Even now, I feel wild
buttercups beside a dirt road more
a part of me than the people I’ve fucked.
Was it a phase? An ex-something
always teased I didn’t appreciate fresh
fish like he did. “Are you sure
you used to eat pussy?” he’d joke
and I’d shrink, laugh. But when
I was young I’d open my mouth under
waves, brush against creatures, their slime, lick
them off wet skin in the sun. Every woman
I’ve known tastes of this vastness, this
ocean—each reef, rock, oil flood,
humpback breach. It’s not fresh fish
I don’t love; it’s their deaths I can’t fit
my tongue around. I prefer the lobster
un-banded, water running through its claws.
Death reminds me too much of myself.
I mean, if you watched an animal die
in agony, would you still enjoy eating its flesh?
Every time I’ve asked this,
only men answer yes.
Jo Blair Cipriano (they/she) is a 2019 Brooklyn Poets Fellow whose work has been published or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, Copper Nickel, Diode Poetry Journal, ANMLY, Yes Poetry, and elsewhere. They are the winner of the 2021 Brooklyn Poets Poem of the Year Award, and were shortlisted for both the 2021 Frontier Magazine New Voices Contest and its 2021 Industry Prize. Jo lives in Tucson, AZ with her partner and the street cat they accidentally adopted.
Photo by Katie Rainbow