Delia Tramontina
3 poems
**
My friend from New York IMs me about the twin towers; I can’t look at it myself ........because I have no antenna on my TV
You used to walk to the corner store, wearing red, white and blue polyester hand-me-down pants, to buy 85-cent ........cigarettes
The wall was sparsely decorated with graffiti from the gang three blocks away at the other candy store. You ........couldn’t read the twisted scrawl of the tags
It took 10 minutes to walk there and back with Salems and four packs of blue Trident for your grandmother
You don’t speak this language anymore
Without construction on the roads, it’s about 18 hours from Colorado to the edge of the left coast
At home, strands of hair stick to your socks. The carpet has spots from years of clumsiness
Nothing is pretty but the sun is sweet for the time being
You chip your toenail on the sidewalk bottle opened by the roots, put your wrappers in the green dumpster
It’s a four-hour trip from New York to Boston
They say it takes 18 months before a city feels like “your city”
You used to like snakeskin but it’s no longer appealing
A week after you moved to San Francisco, you got a steering wheel hand blister from parking
It takes five to six hours to fly between New York and California, depending on the direction
You’re a migrant to your own mind. You keep waiting for your visa—couch surfing in places where you barely speak the language. You hold a phrase book and this is all you can say: phrases—not even helpful phrases that could get you to the bus or the bathroom. They ask people if they believe in euthanasia or if they have an ovarian cyst and it’s not that these are not important things to say, it’s just that you still have to pee
It’s a 20-hour drive from New York to somewhere in the middle of Florida
It takes 20 minutes to wedge the amethyst ball into your navel ring
Seat belts won’t save you. Summer in New York is actually in the summer. You’re sick of people quoting Mark ........Twain to you
You smoked in bars in your 20s but still wake up feeling like there is cotton stuffed in your lungs
The morning, like a mango, is held together with strings
**
I paint my walls blue
Outside the summer was clean. The happy screaming. The children had never heard of filth. Even the dirt was ........spotless. The pigeons licked themselves like cats
Inside, there was a pornographic magazine underneath your Hello Kitty pencil case and Smurf Scratch’n Sniff ........stickers. You tried to look at it accidentally
Outside, adolescence beckoned like a drunk beauty queen, balancing a loose head on her shoulders and a false ........sense of accomplishment below her spaghetti straps
Years later you’d drink too much beer for one night’s bladder, piss against brick walls. Above you there were no ........pigeons on the telephone wires
An albatross is quite an attractive bird, despite its negative reputation. Maybe because of Iron Maiden—almost 14 minutes long. It was common to carry a boom box blaring music into the park. It was covered with silver ........marker and electrical tape
You knew it was good when you couldn’t feel the cold, you watched your friends shiver and were grateful
As time went on, you drank where bathrooms were more readily available. You waited in line, slid past 15 girls ........fixing their lipstick in a four-foot mirror
As time went on, you looked at it several times a day. It smelled like cherry and mint and every time you saw a ........picture of Brainy Smurf holding a spearmint leaf you thought of that woman with a penis down her throat
You tried to dream of sex but it mostly didn’t work
You never moaned or sighed
Years later a nun would ask you to consider the morality of being sexually aroused. You laughed, straddled the windowsill, one leg out the window. Blue squirrels ran along the telephone wires below you. Down on the street, ........children confused them with the moving sky
The association became unfortunate. Every time you went to your favorite stationary store to check out the stickers, you found yourself wanting to go back to your room to peruse the porn. You restricted yourself to once ........a day
The Virgin Mary was so good, she died at an old age but never looked older than 30. And people generally didn’t ........live long back then
In church, you were trained to be confirmed. You giggled, kneeling between church pews, hiding from the priest
As time went on, you bleached and ironed your hair, traded your sacraments
On the street, the children drizzled, collected gardens beneath their fingernails. You were never like them
You never got too close to squirrels—you heard they are vicious, especially the ones in the city
God is like time, folding the creases of sin into your body
Now you wrinkle. You are not pure after all
**
At work no one talks to me
You mummify with Astroturf, make yourself solid with triplicate pads, thatch your breasts in cheap sweaters ........and goose bumps, brave the cold with too much alcohol
You must be purposeful
Do not operate heavy machinery
Your waistline is like a fingerprint
Your crotch is public record, they inspected it for your own good
No one talked about condoms
You avoid folds, have discreet flesh that stays close to the bone. That’s how others know how to love you
Do not ingest
When you shit it smells like the grandmother’s cookies baking on a November afternoon
Never get mayonnaise in the corner of your mouth
No one tells you about mosh pits, about what happens when you get knocked around: you might like it, it’s ........permissible to hit back
Do not stand on top rung
Just to answer to three-letter words, avoid being too round for a vacation in Cabo. You joke about hiding in a ........suitcase but you actually could
Just to be solid—the same: horizontal or vertical. Never to turn the lights out
No one talks about milkshakes
Do not leave unattended
You hide your hands in the pockets of your pores
Your future is a circle getting wider
**
return to sawbuck 5.1
**
Delia Tramontina is originally from Flushing, NY. In 2001, she received her MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University's The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, in Boulder, CO. Her poetry has been published in Ur-Vox, Bombay Gin, Spore and Tinfish. More recently, her review has appeared in Galatea Resurrects. She has poetry forthcoming in Sugar Mule and Hamilton Stone Review. She lives and works in San Francisco, CA.
**
My friend from New York IMs me about the twin towers; I can’t look at it myself ........because I have no antenna on my TV
You used to walk to the corner store, wearing red, white and blue polyester hand-me-down pants, to buy 85-cent ........cigarettes
The wall was sparsely decorated with graffiti from the gang three blocks away at the other candy store. You ........couldn’t read the twisted scrawl of the tags
It took 10 minutes to walk there and back with Salems and four packs of blue Trident for your grandmother
You don’t speak this language anymore
Without construction on the roads, it’s about 18 hours from Colorado to the edge of the left coast
At home, strands of hair stick to your socks. The carpet has spots from years of clumsiness
Nothing is pretty but the sun is sweet for the time being
You chip your toenail on the sidewalk bottle opened by the roots, put your wrappers in the green dumpster
It’s a four-hour trip from New York to Boston
They say it takes 18 months before a city feels like “your city”
You used to like snakeskin but it’s no longer appealing
A week after you moved to San Francisco, you got a steering wheel hand blister from parking
It takes five to six hours to fly between New York and California, depending on the direction
You’re a migrant to your own mind. You keep waiting for your visa—couch surfing in places where you barely speak the language. You hold a phrase book and this is all you can say: phrases—not even helpful phrases that could get you to the bus or the bathroom. They ask people if they believe in euthanasia or if they have an ovarian cyst and it’s not that these are not important things to say, it’s just that you still have to pee
It’s a 20-hour drive from New York to somewhere in the middle of Florida
It takes 20 minutes to wedge the amethyst ball into your navel ring
Seat belts won’t save you. Summer in New York is actually in the summer. You’re sick of people quoting Mark ........Twain to you
You smoked in bars in your 20s but still wake up feeling like there is cotton stuffed in your lungs
The morning, like a mango, is held together with strings
**
I paint my walls blue
Outside the summer was clean. The happy screaming. The children had never heard of filth. Even the dirt was ........spotless. The pigeons licked themselves like cats
Inside, there was a pornographic magazine underneath your Hello Kitty pencil case and Smurf Scratch’n Sniff ........stickers. You tried to look at it accidentally
Outside, adolescence beckoned like a drunk beauty queen, balancing a loose head on her shoulders and a false ........sense of accomplishment below her spaghetti straps
Years later you’d drink too much beer for one night’s bladder, piss against brick walls. Above you there were no ........pigeons on the telephone wires
An albatross is quite an attractive bird, despite its negative reputation. Maybe because of Iron Maiden—almost 14 minutes long. It was common to carry a boom box blaring music into the park. It was covered with silver ........marker and electrical tape
You knew it was good when you couldn’t feel the cold, you watched your friends shiver and were grateful
As time went on, you drank where bathrooms were more readily available. You waited in line, slid past 15 girls ........fixing their lipstick in a four-foot mirror
As time went on, you looked at it several times a day. It smelled like cherry and mint and every time you saw a ........picture of Brainy Smurf holding a spearmint leaf you thought of that woman with a penis down her throat
You tried to dream of sex but it mostly didn’t work
You never moaned or sighed
Years later a nun would ask you to consider the morality of being sexually aroused. You laughed, straddled the windowsill, one leg out the window. Blue squirrels ran along the telephone wires below you. Down on the street, ........children confused them with the moving sky
The association became unfortunate. Every time you went to your favorite stationary store to check out the stickers, you found yourself wanting to go back to your room to peruse the porn. You restricted yourself to once ........a day
The Virgin Mary was so good, she died at an old age but never looked older than 30. And people generally didn’t ........live long back then
In church, you were trained to be confirmed. You giggled, kneeling between church pews, hiding from the priest
As time went on, you bleached and ironed your hair, traded your sacraments
On the street, the children drizzled, collected gardens beneath their fingernails. You were never like them
You never got too close to squirrels—you heard they are vicious, especially the ones in the city
God is like time, folding the creases of sin into your body
Now you wrinkle. You are not pure after all
**
At work no one talks to me
You mummify with Astroturf, make yourself solid with triplicate pads, thatch your breasts in cheap sweaters ........and goose bumps, brave the cold with too much alcohol
You must be purposeful
Do not operate heavy machinery
Your waistline is like a fingerprint
Your crotch is public record, they inspected it for your own good
No one talked about condoms
You avoid folds, have discreet flesh that stays close to the bone. That’s how others know how to love you
Do not ingest
When you shit it smells like the grandmother’s cookies baking on a November afternoon
Never get mayonnaise in the corner of your mouth
No one tells you about mosh pits, about what happens when you get knocked around: you might like it, it’s ........permissible to hit back
Do not stand on top rung
Just to answer to three-letter words, avoid being too round for a vacation in Cabo. You joke about hiding in a ........suitcase but you actually could
Just to be solid—the same: horizontal or vertical. Never to turn the lights out
No one talks about milkshakes
Do not leave unattended
You hide your hands in the pockets of your pores
Your future is a circle getting wider
**
return to sawbuck 5.1
**
Delia Tramontina is originally from Flushing, NY. In 2001, she received her MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University's The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, in Boulder, CO. Her poetry has been published in Ur-Vox, Bombay Gin, Spore and Tinfish. More recently, her review has appeared in Galatea Resurrects. She has poetry forthcoming in Sugar Mule and Hamilton Stone Review. She lives and works in San Francisco, CA.
Labels: 5.1, delia tramontina, spring 2011
