Mick Powell
this is about snapchat but also about you & also about me & also about drowning
but mostly about snapchat, like
why did you open my snapchat and
watch my snapchat story and
not reply for days, then reply
by sending me all the snapchats
that you also put on your story?
first, this semi-tilted nightview
of you, full-bodied red and glowing
underneath a streetlight on a wet road
that we had been down before,
the rising stalks of limped cattails
bowing at you, your majesty
at midnight
second, another of you
by a lake in a bra,
time-stamped and faded,
with your wrists bangled and catching
sharp shades of moonlight
in the way only a black girl can
third, you, flower-crowned
and no longer praying or waiting
for the wasteful ways we watch
things that disappear:
your front-facing-flash five
seconds of straight teeth
filtered blue-gold and fuckable
or my body after it cannonballs
into the water of someone else,
only to fist my throat full of all
their wrecked and wasted
until i am fetal almost everywhere
until i am sorry and admitting
that i ate the trunk of something
someone else cut down to say
i recycle and i reuse and i feel green
and grow greener
which is to repurpose, which is to say
i repurposed you
and i am so sorry
and i am so sorry
but mostly about snapchat, like
why did you open my snapchat and
watch my snapchat story and
not reply for days, then reply
by sending me all the snapchats
that you also put on your story?
first, this semi-tilted nightview
of you, full-bodied red and glowing
underneath a streetlight on a wet road
that we had been down before,
the rising stalks of limped cattails
bowing at you, your majesty
at midnight
second, another of you
by a lake in a bra,
time-stamped and faded,
with your wrists bangled and catching
sharp shades of moonlight
in the way only a black girl can
third, you, flower-crowned
and no longer praying or waiting
for the wasteful ways we watch
things that disappear:
your front-facing-flash five
seconds of straight teeth
filtered blue-gold and fuckable
or my body after it cannonballs
into the water of someone else,
only to fist my throat full of all
their wrecked and wasted
until i am fetal almost everywhere
until i am sorry and admitting
that i ate the trunk of something
someone else cut down to say
i recycle and i reuse and i feel green
and grow greener
which is to repurpose, which is to say
i repurposed you
and i am so sorry
and i am so sorry
Mick Powell (she/her) is a queer black fat femme feminist poet who likes revolutionary acts of resistance. She is currently an MFA Poetry candidate at Southern Connecticut State University. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Winter Tangerine, Crab Fat Magazine, two anthologies focusing on black feminisms and Beyoncé, and others. Mick enjoys good onion rings, smooth hip hop instrumentals, and loving on her loved ones.