Poem by Isabella DeSendi

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AFTER THE BAR

I took the 1 train and met a boy
who told me he wanted to take me home
and lick my pussy. He said I wouldn’t have to
do anything except lie there lost, 
unfelt as new, blear snow.

I still remember writing this:
lilies charred in summer heat
while I searched for some opposite to punishment
and light, like April, slipped through me
violent as cloudburst burning
through fog.

Even if I close the blinds it’s there.
Even if I tell that boy or that bullet
of sun they cannot enter, there’s no mercy.
One will rest its small head against me,
ask: don’t you want to be alive

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