If you squint hard enough
These four poems could look like love songs
By pella {f}elton
On writing a love poem in Ohio during a genocide
Hey,
did I come off as rude last night at writing group
when you were talking
about potential Democratic pickups
after the shootings in Minneapolis?
Sorry ‘bout that.
I know it’s February
But I’ve been trapped in this whale so long
that I got whiplash when the concept of America
spit me out of it’s gullet
I promise I’ll write something happy for next month
It’s just that… well…
when the state wants to torture you out of existence,
it’s really fucking hard
to wander lonely as a cloud.
Intimität (Deutchlandfuck)
Alexi is downbad for the German
and she tells me everything
on this insecure channel
so that I can borrow her intimacy
and imagine what it feels like to want him
as much as I want to be wanted
I’m mediating her hunger
through the ears and arms of a fierce warrior
who knows her network well enough
to lust for the virus she’s letting soak through her nodes
Its a simple ecology
She tells me the situation
then gives the details of his spell over her
how his voice sounds like the German Carl Cassel
describes his work station
and lets me imagine the rest.
I don’t have her affordances.
my mind remediates her fantasies
but I also drift to the loneliness
of being three steps removed from a body
Discourse
There’s so much I want to tell you
so why don’t you tell me everything
and then I’ll tell you everything – but you go first
so that once you’re done telling me everything
you’ve told me everything
and there’s nothing left for me to tell you
and then we can watch netflix and fall asleep
Mutual Aid
My car was an abomination when I drove you to your appointment
your legs stretching to avoid the exploded V8 bottles
and discarded taco bell that littered the passenger seat
with the remnants of the ways I’d let myself go
But you set patiently
as I told you the ways I’d let the world down
While Spotify conjured up a hellscape of Bob Dylan and Moby
before I parked in the pickup circle at the orthepedic center
I told you I was in pain
knowing that so were you.
But you just said “I get that”
and offered me a hug.
Pella Felton is a poet, performer, and teaching artist stationed in Northwest Ohio.
