Michael Angelo Tata
From The Real Housewives of Nowhere
TAMEKA
My night has been insufferably
empty without you like so many
lost digits following the decimal
point of a misguided fraction
that has aspired to become
an irrational number: talk
about an identity crisis.
The confused consumption
of abstruse French philosophy,
the laundering of electric pink
and purple Armani briefs
in a community washroom
straight out of Bates Motel,
shopping for KY at Circus CVS
in the middle of the night, all
the things I do to fill the hours
we’re not kissing, those blank
and endless parentheses punctuating
the plenitude I feel when you’re
near with lovely gaps of nothingness
whose zeros I count manically.
Talked to my Mom, prepared
for a job interview, let Spotify
bathe me in funky aural
neurotransmitters. Facebook
drama here and there, saluting
Gatita in the hallway and letting
her out to forage, since she’s
eating for like sixteen these
days. I refuse to comment on her
promiscuity, but we might wanna
get her feline PrEP. Just saying.
Now I’m boiling Italian Wedding
Soup from a blue can and preparing
a hot shower to wash my dead skin
cells down the drain with a foam
of shower gel and fragmented
ironies. This misplaced jungle
cold that has blown down here
from the North is in my bones
where it turns my soft yellow
marrow to white marshmallow
fit for inclusion atop a Peepza.
Somewhere you are sleeping.
On the floor, a baby blue leather
Puma bag lies engorged with
ensembles tailored to all the places
we’ll go this week end when you
visit: the upscale Nicaraguan fritanga
with the very tall, cross-eyed waiter
whom Brendolina wants to bang,
and of course the fancy taquería
with a bar door ripped unceremoniously
from a graffiti-covered porta-potty
where all the white girls drink tequila
as they prepare for the rigors of
Insta-fame and maybe a Winter Party
practice run at that new bar everyone
is praying will stay open (it won’t).
I live for your fortuitous arrival
and will see your famous chin and
its forest of foliage so soon I can
almost taste the gustatory wonders
of this tropical crevice that dominates
my desires on an arctic night
of Eskimos licking SnoCones
in the cool methane igloos of Titan.
Michael Angelo Tata is an independent scholar, poet and essayist. His Andy Warhol: Sublime Superficiality arrived to critical acclaim from Intertheory Press in 2010. Most recently, his ongoing examination of the ramifications of Derridean thought on friendship, philosophy and materiality appears in Italy’s Rivista di Estetica. His work on Dorothy and William Wordsworth’s conjoined consciousness vis-à-vis Systems Theory was also included in the ecopoetic collection Romantic Sustainability: Endurance and the Natural World, 1780-1830 (Lexington Books, 2015).
SUBMIT to Na(HIV)PoWriMo via our SUBMITTABLE site.
To support the mission and work of HIV Here & Now, consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Indolent Arts Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charity.
Join our mailing list to receive news, updates, and special offers from Indolent Books (HIV Here & Now is a project of Indolent Books).
Here is today’s prompt
(optional as always)
Notice how in today’s poem, Michael Angelo Tata uses pop culture references like Real American Housewives, French philosophy, Armani briefs, Bates Motel, KY, CVS, Spotify, Facebook, PrEP, and more. Write a poem that uses pop culture references in creative, imaginative, unexpected ways.