MARISSA YANG BERTUCCI

PISS POEM

I’m back from BeingLovedWell, USA wearing two more coats of paint. Bumping into walls, trying to echolocate with only this pissant heart and its sundry hungers as a compass. Dykes know how to piss, so the honey bucket at Dolores looks respectable even at six. Sometimes

I run the scenario all the way back to the Castro where Pam put her hands underneath my polite panties, shocked in the elastic. I was so young as to be almost translucent, figured okay... A distance from it, my tendresse was lost trash beyond the moon. I who have danced on tables to be closer to the divine light of god. I could take a mass shooter in an ordinary tussle. Sat on the grass,

I observe all versions of the same outfit. Can’t even catch my own eye at this velocity. At the bar, you bring my leg onto your lap. I drink your usual drink. You take the drink I don’t like. When you come over to kiss me from your short vacation in the bathroom, it makes so much sense. You spirit me as if Cinderella to the donut shop OPEN LATE. A simple glaze, hot from dip, tears apart between us. Painterly steam transmits at the open gash. We could take a mass shooter, I think. You’re laid out just a little differently than me, your pelvic bone sharp against two fingers rinsed clean of their icing.

You’re on my cupid’s bow in the morning’s anterior heat. I am allowed to wash my face but I go fast, getting away with something. What is that sound? How could a mouse squeal so loud, and what on earth could be so sexy at this hour? Garbage truck’s hard labor of gears. Show me a quiet effort and I show you a mommy issue. How come all the soap you got is dusty, what do you actually use day to day, huh? You tell me I smell good. I just smell like you before.

Marissa Yang Bertucci is a Korean dyke writer, printmaker, and public school mental health worker. They were a recent BIPOC artist-in-residence at the Independent Publishing Resource Center. They are from the Bay Area and currently live on Kalapuya land in Portland, OR. @marissayangbertucci