Two Poems
Francesca Tangreti
on a better, happier saint sebastian
across 2,821 miles we read howl together and say “god,
what a shame he was a pedophile,” as if we don’t roll
“holy, holy, holy” over our tongues, cool marbles or
a mouthful of cigarette smoke stolen on the stoop
of a frat house while the wall at your back shudders with the strain of holding
some EDM wordless anthem pulsing with a
raw and preternatural desperation, a similar psalm
when you think about it, to “holy, holy, holy.”
across 2,821 miles we watch reruns of cooking shows from 2016 and laugh
at the same lines, hunch closer to the TV and mutter “that risotto is never
gonna finish in time,” as if we’ve ever tried risotto
which is atomically similar to us
saying “we’ll flip a coin for
the bedroom with the bookcases,” as if we’ve ever had bookshelves of our own, as if
i would ever take them all for myself even if i called a keen tails, but
then i’m sure you’ll be tasting your first risotto off my wooden spoon.
across 2,821 miles we post to the same pinterest board like
middle aged mothers with bangs shorn crooked across our foreheads, only we
call the practice “lamenting” and it is full up with pictures of two girls
a blond and a brunette
cracking baguettes and studying hunched over the same french dictionary
as if i made it past level two on duolingo, as if my tongue doesn’t trip
over “nous sommes nés pour nous trouver” like i’m trying to pray again, like i’m
soaking ginsberg’s twisted “holy”s in wine so i can swallow them easier than 2,821 miles.
when i fall in love again i imagine it will be
something like a wildfire or maybe the blistered redwood
curry paste stirred into coconut milk, making it blush
lamia spotting hermes and thinking “i’m free i’m free i’m free”
crushed ice and the eloquent conversation it poses
like hearing wowee zowee for the first time and especially “grounded”
the intrinsic potential of an eyelash
peeling a clementine, wedging rind beneath your thumbnail and the two-day sting
dad’s old Lexus wheezing to an inexplicable start
liquid smooth and miracle-flesh like galatea
a night cool enough to sleep in socks
one of those action movies: beautiful faces, enormously large
the first sip of white wine and the burgeoning impulse to giggle
juice spurting, coating eve’s tongue, and the impulse to share
twelve playlists with unhinged names (eating glass etc etc)
ears that stick out a little too far
guitar calluses and how they are like kisses or else vampire bites
a cosmic shift in the alignment of my pelvis-spine-neck
an extended forkful of still-steaming pasta
a vegas hotel room: mirrored ceiling, heart-shaped mattress, lurid red, breath on my ear
fall’s last leaf
the first sun-dried apricot like leather and august and candlesmoke
resplendent like crepuscular rays caught hanging over a hilly horizon
or everything i’ve ever touched turning to dog shit in my cupped palms.
Francesca Tangreti writes, “I am an English major and Creative Writing minor, class of 2022, siring from Clinton, New Jersey. These are all quarantine poems, and were a means by which I did some self-discovery during this time period, whether that be with regards to my identity, my friendships, or the strange and malleable future we are currently in some sort of twisted Mexican Stand-Off with.”