I feel most womanly during my cycle because it’s when I feel most violent. I spray
rosewater over the bed & dream of trees topped with anklets, a forest of noodles, Eve
taking what she wanted. you buy me raspberries & promise to find the teal Always
I like.
you wear what I like to call Ross glam & you love shiny gold sneakers, sunglasses
wide enough to hide your bags. you pair your big ring I hate with the pink zebra
pullover & smile. we sit with bundles of code between us, a close dupe of mulberry
silk. this is how others make shrines: moxie, oil, taffeta. you rehearse your scalloped
potatoes. you are most beautiful in neon.
Maya Salameh’s debut poetry collection, HOW TO MAKE AN ALGORITHM IN THE MICROWAVE, won the 2022 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize and is forthcoming from Arkansas University Press this October. She is also the author of the chapbook rooh (Paper Nautilus Press, 2020). Her poems have been published in Poetry, The Rumpus, ANMLY, Asian American Writer’s Workshop, The Brooklyn Review, and elsewhere. She is a poet fellow of the William Male Foundation and was a 2016 National Student Poet, America’s highest honor for youth poets. (updated 6/2022)