The Language of Marriage
_______________this poem is indebted to C.D. Wright’s “And It Came To Pass”
next woman in line & i’ve had
the audacity
to wear red to the ceremony. the language
of non-marriage : repeating i’m happy
//
with how things are as counterargument
having no response but my own
pleasure & comfort
& the language of non-marriage : people leave, die
//
& my white friends say you’re so young & take your time
& my white friends say that sucks, i’m sorry they’re pressuring you
but c.d. wrote : “the unconnected life / is not
worth living”— _______. my white partner says i’m so sorry
//
& nothing more. the color for bad luck changes
depending on context & i explain to my grieving mother
what it means to code-switch—me, the next woman tethered
to a man & wearing black to the reception again, but in a sense
//
i’m already property, right? like he introduces me by first saying my—.
& c.d. wrote : “something else is out there / goddamnit”
but c.d., i turn & am a kaleidoscope of other people’s want
& who has a map for this? not my kin
//
nor the white friends perpetually poised in lives
of their own making—the language of their marriages : pastel af
& posing on their knees in a succession
of fields, & i want someone to take my hand in the sun
//
perhaps in a gazebo on a beach like in the film i criticize
because it is cliché, perhaps i cannot complain
that shades of gold never visit here, _____here,
between red & black ____there is only brown, & what,
//
really, have i learned from the language
of resistance : c.d, what if there is no antecedent
to this feeling : what if there’s nothing else out there
& i’ve spent my life envisioning it?
Charm in Its Southern Variety / Have You Ever Felt So Detached From Your Own Upbringing You Could Sail Away, A Non-Entity Slackening Like A Small Creekwave
this poem is indebted to Morgan Parker’s “ALL THEY WANT
IS MY MONEY MY PUSSY MY BLOOD”
spring & sunflare feral / each mast penetrates a little / sky
all they see is my fun my summer my yes
inventing games using cups and pillowcases / asking if i’d like to join in
i would not
ocean a slate always being rewritten & i am the mud underneath this marshy haven / greasy sticky bottom of cocktails by the pool
the air is salt but also snowmelt & i’m nothing i’ve not been asked to be
i’m asking about the degree / to which skin can punish
i mean i’m self-isolating in a group of white friends like is this 2003 or—
if it’s always just me : mud : mirrored : / _______revolutionary, then, to own my narcissism
to bellygaze alone on the shorewall / where no element warms me / spiderwebs breaching white space between marshgrass
language is excess ___________ / ___________ a boat sails by
i was raised here / made here / my life is a lie
Meditation on Targeted Ads
______If it were possible.
To tuck in the weight
of my wanting, to don
_____________the frilly thing & move my hips
___just so, side
_________to side, pop-song-
careless & holding
______my disorder’s hand.
To grip elastic & suspend
the endless pressing—my shame
______________unfurled. I am just this kind
___of girl living in this kind
__________of world. I have a particular breed
of dog & enjoy watered-down
______meal prep. Inexplicably ricocheting
between types, what corporeal
form have I? Yes,
______________if it were possible. To hold
___myself in & turn the torso
_________just so. Or to let
my body go.
RAENA SHIRALI is the author of GILT (YesYes Books, 2017), which won the 2018 Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a 2019 PEN America Writer’s Emergency Fund Grant, a 2018 VIDA scholarship, a 2017 Philip Roth Residency at Bucknell University, and a “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize in 2013. Shirali’s poems & reviews have appeared widely in American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A Day, The Nation, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She lives in Philadelphia, where she is an Assistant Professor of English at Holy Family University, and serves as a poetry editor for Muzzle Magazine.