The below was read by Paula Gil-Ordoñez Gomez at CARPE DIEM! on May 18, 2025 at dear friend books.
In an olive house in Medford I breathe in cheap smoke & flash the mean neighbors to show them how big my boobs are. I tried invisible & fell in love with the murmuring man. He was checking my wiring, the light switches set up weirdly. He borrowed a woman he didn’t know well. At first it was strange to be careful of him when for all of my life it was more likely that someone like him would hurt me. Shaving his head in the tub he had me play that song from the talk show, shivering like he had a fever & some kind of secret all bloody I thought it’d died. This morning the schoolbus drops me from the disco, my eyes glitter glued shut. I eat his name for breakfast & look up celestial patterns in the bathroom. My hips hurt. I sanitize my yoga mat with red wine. Mid-meditation I pray to St. Anthony for a 100 dollar bill on the floor. I break into someone’s home. I steal a purse with medical records in it. I hotwire a pickup truck & drive to therapy. It breaks down because it’s older than me. It’s near sunset so I leave my body to swim in Mystic Lake. Two wolves circle the dock. I know they are in love because if one attacked me, the other would get involved. The pink sun falls, like glass, into trees. In the dark I become something better. It feels like someone is watching me on TV. We have all been in that position sitting in a circle cheersing & everyone is supposed to look at each other dead in the eyes but someone doesn’t know about that. I try to drown. I wake up in an unfinished basement —pool of my own spit & ambient music wheezing over an intercom like ice picks stabbing my eardrums. I go upstairs to middle-aged strangers —a relief to be in a house that is not empty. The living room couch is the same print as my mother’s, a likely place for arrest. They feed me raw vegetables to reduce the risk of bleeding. My skin looks really good, like leather or plastic. Everyone is horrified. I remember this is a bad place to be. I swipe their lime green tricycle. I cruise to the Irish pub. There is nowhere to park. Like a sports car I am very loud in the way people want but no one recognizes me, good because I’m escaping & doing crime. A stringy child sneaks into my booth & tickles me, his face frothy & translucent like a cartoon glass of milk. I braid his hair & ask about his favorite things—horses, soup, flamingos. We watch mildew spread above us in slow motion. He puts chewed gum on his seat to save. I pocket it. I give him the tricycle. I give him the world.
Paula Gil-Ordoñez Gomez is a Mexican-Spanish-American poet based in Brooklyn. Her writing has been published in HAD, trampset, X-R-A-Y, and Rejection Letters, among others. She is a 2024 Periplus Fellow. Say hi on Twitter @paulagilordonez and find more of her work at paulagilordonezgomez.com.
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