Yesenia Montilla is an Afro Latina poet & translator, daughter of immigrants and native New Yorker. Her poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day and others. She received her MFA from Drew University in poetry and poetry in translation and is a Canto Mundo Fellow. The Pink Box, her first collection, was long-listed for the Pen Open Book Award 2016.---------
Notes on Self Care
—for Hikmet & Girmay
what better way to forget
that the world is burning & vulnerable — (falling
leaves in autumn) than by imagining
matching rain boots in London town
Idris & his Luther like wool coat with their deep
pockets where both your hands fit
as he walks you to his flat
& the décor is ridiculous: French chic
with some touches of Kentucky country
but it’s your fantasy & there’s no room
for black leather couches or 70 inch TVs—no bachelor’s
Shangri-La here
No beer in the fridge, only rows & rows of vintage Bordeaux
You chase Idris across your forehead
whirling into bed with him like a wrecking ball
imagining his scruff face
against your neck, his beard
better than any dead
sea exfoliator you’ve ever owned
his languid fingers like rakes
against your plump body
& he loves your poems—
all of him, his 40 trillion cells
at attention to every stanza you write
& what better way to live than to desire this way?
& this is not escapism it’s survival—
One day, this earth will rot
or worse
be made good
& there will be no need
for this sort of day dreaming
One day, this earth will be good
or worse
we’ll be good
& Idris will be a faint taste of something
you once wanted
what I mean is maybe one day
we’ll get it right & this fantasy will be unnecessary
like trees shedding against a November sky
so unnecessary you’ll sit down to write a poem
about the time you fantasized you made love to Idris Elba
& even that won’t hold back your damn sorrow
nothing will even in this perfect world
nothing will make you whole again
not even remembering how in your reverie he held
you like one of your metaphors
between his fingers
as though your poems were just delusions
foliage falling to the earth routine & dying
thin as rice paper
tender as paper cranes—
Muse Found in a Colonized Body
Before the bees nothing
like before free labor nothing neither
I think what I mean is that before I learned about
pollination, love,
the discovering of another to make
something sweet I already knew
about the things my body could do
without compensation—
Karl Marx as Muse
I am no Jenny, but I want you to write me a love poem
Something about a proletariat uprising
Something about free water & food
Something about more than just survival
You’ve whispered in my ear a dozen times:
you write poems because of a delicate fissure
in the ruling class’s ideology. & when I look
at my paycheck, for a moment I feel very
bourgeoisie, all petticoats & pale skin.
But later, after I’ve paid everything
after I’ve watched the Kardashians on E
after another bottle of Malbec gone
I dream of setting the world on fire—
I dream of you & your precious beard how if alive now
we wouldn’t be friends, you’d live in Brooklyn & be calledhipster
sitting in shadowy bars
drinking bourbon & discussing your own theories but never
writing them down never that—
Oh, precious Karl, father of all things revolutionary
take me to bed tell me something about alienation that you haven’t already
If I stare too hard at the world it all becomes an assembly line
Lover, I beg you gift me a revolution—
Feel Gray, Must Exit
—for Suzanne Mallouk
nowhere to go
but you have to go somewhere
if I had a garage I’d have a sale: EVERYTHING MUST GO
even the garage—
my obsession with teeth would prompt me to keep my toothbrush.
& my ovaries, how they cry lately maybe I’ll leave
my birth control pills behind make love
to a wanderlust with a wild beard &
a sweater like moth fodder our baby
will look & sound like iggy pop
born with eyeliner on.
& I’ll never come back not even for funerals
not even if they bought me a ticket—