Solstice
How unimmediate, the word “immediately.”
Its polysyllabic unsuddenness. It has been a molasses
week & a molten world. Underwhelmed by
myself for the umpteenth epoch I turn to Microsoft
Word to ask: Do I need a personal poem
or a personal pizza? Microsoft Word loves
me, would like me to download its freshest
many fonts. I don’t need you, men who call me
needy. Frolicsome men of toothsome
nipples. I am needy. Better than thinking
you need no one while needing work
& a freshly color-coded refoldering of your inbox. I need
a man’s goddamn merry nipples & some better words
out of his mouth than Actually, I’m not mad
while he fumes by our magnet-skinned fridge. Actually,
I should be a less forgiving font. Not Garamond,
which prettifies every sentence no matter
how many rational men rationally
stew in it. Garamond: what happens when the soul
decides to rebrand as something visible
& especially beautiful when italicized.
Once my father told me I was soulless for loving
men, ugly for wanting that beauty, & as though
women were providers of men’s souls.
Once a man who loved
being called daddy told me I was beautiful
inside & out, & it was like Garamond-flavored
pizza I did in fact eat & found cliched
& am eating. Actually, I need
Microsoft Word so much I am begging it
this stormy yet broiling first summer night
not to leave me when my university
subscription expires in six days. Let’s not
be hasty, I say, using a much more immediate adverb
for my urgency. Let’s not say anything we’ll
regurgitate later as knives. Don’t go
back to that pristinely double-spaced field of other
Microsoft Words. I promise
to download every fugly to mediocre font
you require. To put your secret favorite word
“rimmingly” in a poem. To write better
or at least in more fonts. To work
on our relationship. Because this is my longest
one & I don’t know who I am without the fiery
squiggles of your fleet attempts
to fix me.
Cover photo by Bernadetta Watts
