Photo by bobafred
It isn't enough that you show up
even when you're not wanted
because no one really knows who you are
and when you try to introduce yourself
no one takes you seriously.
What is a human besides meat?
Does electricity really create what we call
life & what does that exactly make you?
In a room full of people you sometimes
call your friends, you hover like a stale
moon that the earth outgrew like those ugly
overalls your mom made you wear
to your school photo in 5th grade
and all the other kids laughed at you,
your heavy body trying to hide as if you could
hide yourself, your body something that
not even the adults understood.
Sometimes you think your own mom
didn't even want to have you but then
what does that matter, the want to be wanted
because you don't even know what you want
anyway, so how could you expect anyone
else to know what you do not?
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York, and is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Marys of the Sea (The Operating System, 2017), Xenos (Agape Editions, 2016) and the editor of A Shadow Map: An Anthology by Survivors of Sexual Assault (CCM, 2017). Joanna received a MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College, and is also the founder of Yes, Poetry, a managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine and CCM, as well as an instructor at Brooklyn Poets. Some of their writing has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Brooklyn Magazine, Prelude, Apogee, Spork, The Feminist Wire, BUST, and elsewhere.