Names
Your tongue enters downstairs.
It goes all the way into my cervix,
winding through my intestines,
inching up my esophagus
until it pronounces the words in my mouth.
This intimate junction of vocals and skin feels good
but what am I, phonetically, than just a woman?
I am
the girl you like at work
one of the boys who jokes about titties
the it who wears snug sweaters
the faggot on a crosswalk
they grammatically incorrect
the women who’ve made you cry
I am your sheath,
for without you, I remain a whisper in the wind
a fleeting incoherence that has since been misremembered
a fracked hole with the dirt mound dissolving in the breeze
as you arise to blaze a trail once more,
cutting my throat on your way out.
But I can’t pretend I’m no hypocrite
as Venus beams at me through the open window
So when the droplets on my inner thigh crystallize
I want you to lick them up.
Dream
As the clock ticks to the protestant’s bedtime, I take a visit to my childhood house. There I see the TV that spun about the counter where I used to watch Family Guy at the dinner table.
There, my brain’s free space shows me relatives, friends, actors, science, counties, street names, ideology
a deep conjuring of approximations, of facial recognition technology and tungsten lights that all attest my name.
I close my eyes, and in my lids I see the ceiling.
Jenna Cipolloni is a Baltimore-based poet and filmmaker whose work has appeared in Steel Jackdaw Magazine and their self-published poetry zine School Nights, which has been featured in two gallery exhibitions in Havre de Grace’s Gallery 220. Jenna was a prelim judge at the 2024 Womxn of the World Poetry Slam and served on the committee that selected the state’s poet laureate. They can be found at open mics across the Mid-Atlantic.