from Report from the Smith Society Vol. 1 No. 1
AT THE MAGICAL GIRL HOSPITAL
for Jessica
At the magical girl hospital
we go out in the rain
wearing our long night
gowns, white cats’ fur
for fleet feet. The wet green
grass is alive, alive
and green, and wet. The balm
we pour on our hands, our
eyes is sweet and slick – tastes
like meat. Indoors
once again, under clean
white sheets, we light
matches to feel
our pink, our tongues.
HAVENS
Mouthlings, wonder-full and alive:
quick to scissor buzz, pink
ticks and lashy eyes blink-clicking
as if to flirt with sleeping. Dirt-church
where nothing dies. Singer swings
through cloth, dividing cotton
into quotients edged with tethers
that rise to wispy clingings
and forgive the mourning spots
and soothe tangled knots
of missing weather, empty
parking lots and chainlink
edges, asphalt frayed
like an old gray skirt kissing
skinned knees, like the times
before you knew someone –
some man – might be looking.
HUNTER HEART
I
hate nostalgia. A haunted
house. 600 broken keys
and desire like a ghost
flitting about, making trouble –
trembling and glossing – wearing
us out. "It's just an old, filthy
ruin." Fantasy-space come
crumbling down. Teenage
kitsch-tacky of troubadours
and tempests. Space
were unmaking in our ribs, rubbing
out the moment, looking down,
"I don't own any of this."
A record murmurs static.
Our kisses become
machines: our armless
grammar, our armor.
GOOD GIRLS
Tell me all about your sisters.
Living
is a secret we do in caves, dens
where
the turntable never stops
spinning.
Drinking rum and cokes
and
twisting our hair into knots, attempting
to
braid ourselves together. We’re like
those
spooky twins, a pair of ticking
clocks
twitching in unison. We are most
interested
in the movies that begin
with
a missing girl. We find ourselves
there.
Here, we win. Take a drink
and
tell me how they left you
at
the Mall. I’ll apologize for them.
For
all of them, and for all the times.
For
all the wicked things I’ve done.
Michelle
Detorie is
the author of numerous chapbooks of poetry and visual poetry including Our
Clean Heart (Outside Voices), Fur Birds (Insert Press), How Hate
Got Hand (eohippus labs), and Bellum Letters (Dusie). Her first
full-length collection, After-Cave, was released with Ahsahta Press. She
is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, as well as a
direct to artist grant from the Santa Barbara Art Collaborative for her public
art project, The Poetry Booth. From 2015 until 2021 she served as the poetry
editor for Entropy. Last year,
Michelle began working with California Poets in the Schools to help launch and
develop the Youth Poet Laureate program in Santa Barbara Country. By day, she
works full-time at Santa Barbara City College training tutors and supporting
students in the Communication Lab and the Writing Center. For more information
about Michelle and her writing and teaching, please visit michelledetorie.com
