JOANNA C. VALENTE

Creation Myth


    You ask me why I never pressed
    charges. I drink the rest of my gin & tonic,
    begin to tell you how a man

    discovered eternal life in 1988. He found
    it on the ocean floor. Instead of dying,
    jellyfish age in reverse––bury themselves

    until tiny flecks rise in gleams, endlessly
    rocking. An injured medusa will sink
    &reabsorb into the ocean floor––

    it will wait. Eventually, a polyp will form
    to reproduce a medusa. The easiest way
    to make a jellyfish regenerate

    is to mutilate it. It does not feel when
    attacked. Someday I won't feel anymore
    either. We both play dumb

    when the bartender asks if we're okay
    ––I rock my chair the way a mother rocks
    her child––ocean rocking a sailboat in arms

    of salt. Self-control is difficult for humans:
    ourhearts still primitive. I scratch at skin
    until a new layer reveals

    impermeable. In the dim light of the bar,
    all the bodies so dense, pores secreting
    black. They almost disappear.

    When it's time, you ask my name. Look
    forJ's––you'll find them everywhere:
    24 hour diners, cliffside harbors in low

    sunlight––hotel rooms with unsure             
    women. I was there once, in a room with
    a man. It was late-winter in a big city

    where lights no longer cared about sounds
    during sex. He taught me how to keep my body             
    still& thin as pine needles, how to listen

    to Billie Holiday cry in the backseat of my car,
    how to take a pill so a child dies––           
    how every spring, fewer azaleas stay

    in bloom. I smelled my cunt souring,
    something gone wrong––violence never
    far from the hands of men:

    hands around neck––my life still believing
    in the yet-to-be. The future has changed.
    Early bloomer, still waiting for the one poem

    that will bring me home. I didn't tell you how
    I used to think of all the ways to fall in front
    of cars, sacrifice my body to get what I had

    before. I used to pray for a new body by moon
    light, a return to being human. I leave without giving             
    you my name. I do not believe in punishment.

 
 
 
127 The Paris-American

Joanna C. Valente was born in Manhattan, New York & now resides in Brooklyn. She received her MFA in poetry writing at Sarah Lawrence College. In 2011, Joanna was the recipient of the American Society of Poet’s Prize. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Paris-American, The Atlas Review, El Aleph Press, decomP, Thrush Poetry Journal, La Fovea, The 22 Magazine, among others. In her spare time, she is a mermaid.

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   Next week's poet:

 Joe Betz