SaraEve Fermin
Diane Nyugen, Single, NYC
Stops cutting her hair, lets her bangs grow out, likes the way the long flicks against her back,
a warm hand that never lets go. Still takes the medication, sneaks into the complex next
door to use the pool, swims away her insomnia, all the anti-depression weight. Never goes
to Chinatown, not even for food, pays full price for the good leather knapsack that homes
her everything she might need to start over. Still thinks about starting over, still sees her ex-
husbands on television, still sometimes cries when she looks at the tabloids... or the stars...
or sees a horse. Still wonders if her thirties were all just a dream. One day, she reads about
Mr. Ed, how he wasn’t a talking horse at all, they just rubbed peanut butter on his gums.
Wonders if she was the one doing the rubbing. Never eats peanut butter again.
Stops cutting her hair, lets her bangs grow out, likes the way the long flicks against her back,
a warm hand that never lets go. Still takes the medication, sneaks into the complex next
door to use the pool, swims away her insomnia, all the anti-depression weight. Never goes
to Chinatown, not even for food, pays full price for the good leather knapsack that homes
her everything she might need to start over. Still thinks about starting over, still sees her ex-
husbands on television, still sometimes cries when she looks at the tabloids... or the stars...
or sees a horse. Still wonders if her thirties were all just a dream. One day, she reads about
Mr. Ed, how he wasn’t a talking horse at all, they just rubbed peanut butter on his gums.
Wonders if she was the one doing the rubbing. Never eats peanut butter again.
Pickles and I, the Frat House, 2011
We are drunk as shit, facing off at the table, anchoring every round of flip cup, always
teammates during beer pong. No gag reflex and tongues out in every blurred picture. There
is a horse in the barn in the basement that wants to fall asleep but there is always some new
girl trying to fuck him. When the keg is tapped, Pickles begins to collect dollars and dimes
from the party until we have enough to pile into the van, let a woozy chicken drive us to the
liquor store. I never go inside; I take everyone's Burger King orders. I stick my head out the
window during the car ride, singing until asking them to pull over so I can puke...they try to
make me go to rehab.. It is 2011 and I am not single but I am newly divorced from my family
and that feels something like alone-- I try not to think of it, just write poems and learn how
to convince men to buy me shots, fill my stomach with Blue Moons and SoCo. Pickles and
I, we aren’t friends exactly; we just fill the hole in each other’s lives where women keep
failing us. Where sister left us behind, we hold each other’s hair up in the bathroom, make
sure no one puts anything in each other’s drink, kiss on the mouth just so men will leave us
alone. Still, we call ourselves one of the boys, answer to bro or bitch, laugh along to the story of
another girl outside our circle becoming smaller and smaller. Always ready for four am
pancakes and karaoke, walking the avenues loud enough to remind people we aren’t afraid of
squatting in a dark alley to piss after last call. When we fall into our beds, heads reeling from
drugs and drink, we still remember to call each other, make sure everyone is ok. Count on
one hand the sexual assaults we kept the other safe from. Push down the memories of the
ones we couldn’t.
We are drunk as shit, facing off at the table, anchoring every round of flip cup, always
teammates during beer pong. No gag reflex and tongues out in every blurred picture. There
is a horse in the barn in the basement that wants to fall asleep but there is always some new
girl trying to fuck him. When the keg is tapped, Pickles begins to collect dollars and dimes
from the party until we have enough to pile into the van, let a woozy chicken drive us to the
liquor store. I never go inside; I take everyone's Burger King orders. I stick my head out the
window during the car ride, singing until asking them to pull over so I can puke...they try to
make me go to rehab.. It is 2011 and I am not single but I am newly divorced from my family
and that feels something like alone-- I try not to think of it, just write poems and learn how
to convince men to buy me shots, fill my stomach with Blue Moons and SoCo. Pickles and
I, we aren’t friends exactly; we just fill the hole in each other’s lives where women keep
failing us. Where sister left us behind, we hold each other’s hair up in the bathroom, make
sure no one puts anything in each other’s drink, kiss on the mouth just so men will leave us
alone. Still, we call ourselves one of the boys, answer to bro or bitch, laugh along to the story of
another girl outside our circle becoming smaller and smaller. Always ready for four am
pancakes and karaoke, walking the avenues loud enough to remind people we aren’t afraid of
squatting in a dark alley to piss after last call. When we fall into our beds, heads reeling from
drugs and drink, we still remember to call each other, make sure everyone is ok. Count on
one hand the sexual assaults we kept the other safe from. Push down the memories of the
ones we couldn’t.
When Bojack Horseman says
My Mother is dead and everything is worse now--
-- and you see the moment it registers,
a small gasp, the way his hand clenches,
as if holding on to the tail of a ghost,
already gone. How grief morphs
a life of resentment and fear into
longing for a sitcom series wrap-up
type love. A mother, who maybe
did show up at recitals, picked him
up from desolation. A father who
stayed, even when a life of resentment
was everything worse. How the brain
will always tip towards serotonin,
this is how I know we are our own best
magicians. I wonder—what will it take
for me to call her. When will I break?
Or am I already broken.
My Mother is dead and everything is worse now--
-- and you see the moment it registers,
a small gasp, the way his hand clenches,
as if holding on to the tail of a ghost,
already gone. How grief morphs
a life of resentment and fear into
longing for a sitcom series wrap-up
type love. A mother, who maybe
did show up at recitals, picked him
up from desolation. A father who
stayed, even when a life of resentment
was everything worse. How the brain
will always tip towards serotonin,
this is how I know we are our own best
magicians. I wonder—what will it take
for me to call her. When will I break?
Or am I already broken.
SaraEve Fermin is a performance poet and epilepsy advocate from northeast New Jersey. A 2015 Best of the Net nominee, she has performed for both local and national events, including the 2013 Women of the World Poetry Slam, the Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Los Angeles 2015 Care and Cure Benefit to End Epilepsy in Children and as a reader for Great Weather for MEDIA at the 2016 NYC Poetry Festival on Governors Island. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in GERM Magazine, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, and the Great Weather for MEDIA anthology The Careless Embrace of the Boneshaker, among others. She is the author of You Must Be This Tall to Ride (Swimming With Elephants Publishing, summer 2016), View From the Top of the Ferris Wheel (Clare Songbirds Publishing House fall 2017) and Trauma Carnival (Swimming With Elephants Publishing, 2019).
She loves Instagram: @SaraEve41
She loves Instagram: @SaraEve41