mango popsicle
i.
I dreamt you loved me and it didn’t even feel weird.
I couldn’t remember anything but flickering images
of your skin. the honeyed, hellish feel of it. I knew
it was yours. I didn’t have to ask. I woke up in a
capsized ship, in a half-dug grave. I shook the worms
and night-colored soil from my sleeves for hours. my
head pumped full of periwinkle flower petals and
purple cotton candy. my feet didn’t touch the ground
the whole day, I swear.
ii.
every once in a while, the idea crawls back in my
brain that I never got to say the things I wanted to say
to you. there was a slow, silken drifting. a crumbling
of paper. I guess what I want to know is, how soon
is too soon to let go of these feelings that throb like
bee stings (the red-eyed, feverish passion, the razor-
quick stabbing, the immediate death afterwards)?
how soon is too soon to light these crooked dreams
on fire? they spill sugar all over my pillow. it’s a fucking
mess. but more importantly— how late is too late?
iii.
I fear seeing you again more than anything. I have
disintegrated from running into people who were
only half as important. I think I’d melt instantly, mango
popsicle in mid-July. I think you’d slip in the mess.
iv.
I don’t know how to be something you want. some
days, I can coexist peacefully with this fact. other
days, it chews bottomlessly on my ankles, travels up
to my organs. I want to cut off all my hair. I want to
drink vodka and kiss aggressively straight men. I want
to know what I did wrong. there was a bear in chicago
and his eyes were sunken like flat, black pebbles, his
fur matted green against his glass enclosure. he begged
me to kill him. I know you wanted to see the bears, but
I didn’t have the heart to tell you. you didn’t thank me,
only fell asleep without saying good night. I don’t know
what I expected. I never know.
“A Group of Men Is Called a Threat”
1.
cling tight to your mother’s hand everywhere you walk. never wander, trail behind. when she insists on keeping you in her sight, you want to sigh, but even still- she stands at the front door as you cross the street to the neighbor’s house. she says, I need to watch you. she says, don’t ever get caught alone, especially with a man. god only knows what could happen.
2.
your coming-of-age present is hot pink pepper spray to fill the spaces your mother no longer can. you clutch it on your walks home after dark like a lifeline, fingers white and ready. the shadows tiptoe closer, breath hot at your neck. every streetlight, every passerby is a sanctuary. your mind is whipping wildly through every story you’ve heard of girls who never learned how to scream or keep their keys between their fingers like a fear-forged weapon. stand up straight and walk quick, don’t look sweet but don’t look brazen either. wear headphones, and when a man starts to leer at you and shout, crank up the music to deafening, and walk faster. and when you make it home, lock the door behind you and exhale.
3.
your footsteps are silent, your voice irreversibly hushed. this is how you survive, by mastering the art of being utterly soundless, of passing by undetected. be dumb. be helpless. laugh sweet and say thank you, but don’t ever say no or leave me alone, even when your skin is shrieking. let your tongue grow comfortable only in the guilt-heavy I’m sorry.
4.
and yet when every other girl you know tells you the same story of men screaming filth at her in the streets, ripping the clothes from her thrashing body as deafening music drowns out her voice, all you can do is nod. all you can say is, I know.
Girl Scout Camp, 2011
on the drive into the trees, we were
the catastrophe, but never the story
behind it. they came in through the
window one night, sweetened by pitch
blackness. slender and sixteen and
beautiful, they snickered at us in our
long pajamas, our creaky bunk beds.
who are you, we said. we were barely twelve.
they were high school girls, bored and
barbaric all at once. we gathered ‘round
them like disciples and they told us how
beer tastes like young adulthood feels—
a plunging, a thrusting, a sickening, a
dying all in your mouth. how many of you
girls know how to give a man a blow job?
some of us nodded, but none of us really knew. they passed around a tube
of toothpaste, showed us that when
your throat is heaving and you’re feeling
a little less human, that means you’re
doing it right. they showed us how to
shake our asses, how to taste the inside
of another girl’s mouth, how to be a
spectacle and a three-course meal and a
playful, gaping hole. and when we could
no longer stomach the unease, the shame,
they said, our prodigies. our little naturals.
they ducked back out the window
as the sky lit its own belly on fire.
Wanda Deglane is a capricorn from Arizona. She is the daughter of Peruvian immigrants and attends Arizona State University. Her poetry has been published or forthcoming from Rust + Moth, Glass Poetry, L’Ephemere Review, and Former Cactus, among other lovely places. Wanda is the author of Rainlily (2018), Lady Saturn (Rhythm & Bones, 2019), Venus in Bloom (Porkbelly Press, 2019), and Sugar Weather (Vessel Press, 2020).