POETRY September 29, 2017

Dear mom (or I hate to break it to you but the sky is a whore, too)

Amalie Kwassman

by Amalie Kwassman

 
The sky lets it all hang out there. The clouds are like the sky’s breasts. And do you ever see the sky at night? How it glitters with all those stars. So that’s where I get it from. I get it from the stars. I get it from the rocks. Look at how much they enjoy being turned over.

So, Mom, you can stop telling me I need to get a separate hotel room from my boyfriend when we go to the casino or insisting that I don’t use any of the towels he touches. Look at the leaves. How they almost smile when they are getting blown over. How much do they enjoy just being put on their backs once in a while? They like that sticky delicate honey, too.

Everyone is ecstatic when their body gets interrupted. I’ve just been waiting for someone to suck on the nutmeg of my heart until I explode. I want someone extracting oxygen from my lips. Everyone likes that drastic reptilian arch on their back. Everyone likes that silky acceleration of two bodies together. Everyone.

The sky is a whore, too.

And that’s where I get it from. You can tell the neighbors that when they see me dancing naked in the middle of the road with my body shimmering and swaying, I saw the sky do it. The leaves. The rocks. Everyone.

Amalie is originally from Brooklyn, New York. She is a current MFA candidate in the Creative Writing & Environment program at Iowa State University and poetry editor of Flyway. She was awarded a tuition grant to study at the Juniper Summer Writing Institute. Her work has been published in Hyperallergic, The Ilanot Review, Punchnel's, and elsewhere. Most recently, her poem was a finalist in The Comstock Review's Muriel Craft Bailey Poetry Prize.
Amalie is originally from Brooklyn, New York. She is a current MFA candidate in the Creative Writing & Environment program at Iowa State University and poetry editor of Flyway. She was awarded a tuition grant to study at the Juniper Summer Writing Institute. Her work has been published in Hyperallergic, The Ilanot Review, Punchnel’s, and elsewhere. Most recently, her poem was a finalist in The Comstock Review‘s Muriel Craft Bailey Poetry Prize.