Listen to a podcast of Lena Judith Drake’s “bloodless new year’s.”
bloodless new year’s
what am i supposed to say to you?
i miss you so much. i can’t wait to see you.
i can’t wait to tell you i’m going to kill our baby.
she, prepubescent boy hips, is pregnant,
and my nipples have darkened but i don’t know how much counts.
if i told my mother it was immaculate, and she didn’t believe me,
it might be a good jumping point for atheism.
why mary, and not me? why do you still believe in god?
and where am i going to get four hundred dollars?
i don’t want the pills, i want the suction.
like the suction at the dentist,
and i almost puked.
i haven’t given a blowjob in three weeks,
my gag reflex is coming back.
palms against the cold wall, weed contact high spinning me nauseous,
i slept in a bed with a girl and her boyfriend–
he reached across her breasts and pinched my arm,
told me how much he wanted to touch me
while she shook her head in the dark.
my knees bumped the wall.
her and i touched foreheads in the middle of night.
her and i kissed, flat lips,
closed lips, while men watched porn on the couch.
i’ve been pressing fingers beneath my bellybutton, hard.
i don’t want you to leave me,
and i don’t want you to blame yourself.
because remember,
it’s my fucking body. my fucking body.
Listen to a podcast of Lena Judith Drake’s “A Reading.”
A Reading
I am cute with the microphone, it’s too tall for me.
I shake hands with the boss, I don’t drink all of the free water.
I go right after the techno song, and I wonder
why smoke cigarettes in a hookah lounge?
while I read targeted-audience poems. No lesbian lost love, I fold
that one up, stuck it into my purse,
no carefully constructed water metaphors, or new/better-probably love from a boy poems.
Some poems with smoke in them, one with drinking,
and the football boys
in the back are snapping their fingers. I egg them on.
I am in glasses and a brown sweater because apparently I’m a poet.
I come back to our apartment
after cigarette smoke so thick your upper lip
tastes like it, and I have to re-shampoo my hair.
Which wouldn’t have happened if they had been smoking hookah, not cigarettes.
Then I’d smell like melon. Then you’d taste like melon. Smoke-breath melon, but still.
About the author:
Lena Judith Drake, editor-in-chief of Breadcrumb Scabs magazine, is currently a Creative Writing student at Grand Valley State University. She is Puerto Rican, a poet, a geek, and a feminist activist. She enjoys Chinese buffets, hot showers, and sleeping.
