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.