Sophia Le Fraga, “one-way glass”
Author: Poetry Editor
June 20, 2012
This week, Sophia Le Fraga takes Adrienne Rich at her word and “diagram[s] the sentence”.
one-way glass:
a poem in the post-post-confessional mode
SO I have been
reading a lot of
sex poems lately
that have made me
start thinking I should
write my own some
time like this one
poet reminds
us that period blood
is something sexy
and when a man
eats you out and
you’re bleeding it
is so hot you can’t
just not write a
poem about it
this morning I woke up with
thirty minutes to spare
instead of five and like every
morning first I entered
the bathroom to pee
then realized like every
morning that there was
barely any toothpaste left
so I spiraled the tube
on top of itself and squirted
out a little toothpaste
turd and like every day
forgot to buy more Colgate
then I went to the labs
where a doctor and I stick
people into brain machines
and tie them up to beds where
they can’t move except I’m
not whipping them but zapping
their little neurons every four
seconds which honestly is
just as sexy
I went to my class
and copied Fitterman’s lines
on the whiteboard and my
professor another doctor of
words said derive it so I did:
If we had been walking that way,
we would have ended up over there.
it took me fifteen minutes
and eight tries which is too
many and too slow I think
everyone in my class could have
done it faster I derive and can’t
stop thinking about my teachers
I follow them the way Tom Cruise
follows L. Ron Hubbard like it’s a
scary thing to do but might be
scarier not to do it
I have no teacher but I wonder
what makes my teacher sad
maybe I just don’t know him
walking home head
down hand grazing wire
fence cut my index finger
so deep I can’t stop bleeding
remember the most efficient
way to absorb alcohol is
through the bloodstream
plunge my finger deep inside
a bottle of Svedka
then my band-aid
then the bandage I wrap around
to keep the band-aid still
I sit at the lesbian bar on
my corner thinking of phrase
trees and can’t get the voice of
Dexter to stop narrating every
thing I’m doing like
THENNN SHE PUT
THE BEER DOWN although I’m
really just approximating since
I’ve only seen Dexter
once and I was really stoned
off a personal joint so
frankly can’t say I really remember
then I saw a girl whose
unwashed hair caught a purple
light that called me toward
her and I fucked her from two to six
against white walls my finger
underlining features my
blood drawing shapes like microphones
when I said I was going to wash
my face but really left
her the walk home was brisk
and the cold on my face felt
brittle I remember the walks I
took back in my freshman year my
armpits sweaty and clothes sometimes
spotted in period blood like the time I
walked in my sleep and pissed on Dana’s
dead animal rug and I think I
said I love you
and I know
she didn’t say it back
and I remember deciding in the
future to forget that part
the walk was long so I listened to
the Magnetic Fields song I had
just downloaded remembering that the
only purpose of my writing is to have
something to type or scan and I would
almost rather be the animal
rug lying on the floor
getting pissed on
——
New York-based SOPHIA LE FRAGA finished her B.A. in Linguistics and Poetry at New York University. Her work has appeared in Yes Poetry; Quantum Poetry; Paperblög; A Clean, Well-Lighted Place; The Copperfield Review; The Broome Street Review and Lemon Hound; and was exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, the Corcoran Gallery, and in 2011, throughout Berlin. A book of erasures, Song of Me and Myself, is forthcoming.
