Nothing Is Okay

by Rachel Wiley

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  Get dressed up like it’s prom night and your whole young glamourous life

  NOTHING IS OKAY

  NOTHING IS OKAY

  by Rachel Wiley

  “I fall in love with myself, and I want someone to share it with me. And I want someone to share me, with me.”

  —EARTHA KITT

  © 2017 by Rachel Wiley

  Published by Button Poetry / Exploding Pinecone Press

  Minneapolis, MN 55403 | http://www.buttonpoetry.com

  All Rights Reserved

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Cover Design: Amy Law

  ISBN 978-1-943735-30-3

  Ebook ISBN 978-1-943735-38-9

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  But They Say I Will Not Make It

  Rejection #1

  Mixed Girl

  My Whiteness Hits on Me in a Bar

  The Art of Riding a Tandem Bike Alone

  In the Event the Wind Is Knocked Out of You

  Cooking With Tears

  Femme Visibility

  Notes on Depression

  A Plague of Doubts

  How to Eat Your Feelings: Anger

  Glory in Two Parts

  Halloween Shopping With My Niece

  Grief

  An Incomplete Pinterest Board of Uses for the Abundance of Condoms That Expired After He Left

  Horoscope for the Premature Scorpio: March 2013

  Incantation for Autonomy

  Fat Joke

  Potential Slogans for OkCupid

  Rejection #2

  Joy Buzzer

  Prime Cuts

  My Sugar, My Sweet

  A Green Book for My Niece

  Promissory

  First Impressions

  How to Eat Your Feelings: Self Doubt

  Something After Borrowed

  Peace Offerings for the Girl with Her Back Pressed Against the Door

  Big Women

  The Opposite of Up

  Horoscope for the Premature Scorpio: July 2014

  Havisham

  I Spent Years Not Wearing Red …

  Letter to My Cat Exploring My Impending Spinsterhood

  What Is Left

  A Litany on Breathing

  For My Grandpa on His 76th Birthday

  The Body Song

  No One’s

  When We Were Kings, One Day

  How to Eat Your Feelings: Loneliness

  Form Letter to My Exes …

  Expect-Cum Patronus

  Dry Cake Wishes and Tap Water Dreams

  Rejection #3

  Joyce Carol Vincent: Illusionist

  Sleeping Giants

  Spoilage

  How to Eat Your Feelings: Anxiety

  Solidarity With Miss Colombia 2015

  Settle

  They Bolt the Headboards to the Walls These Days

  A Response to the Men of OkCupid Adamant About Showing Me Their Cocks

  Paradise

  Ode to All the Mothers I Borrowed

  Waiting for the End of the World

  For Fat Girls Who Considered Starvation When Bulimia Wasn’t Enough

  The Leaving

  How My Feminism Learned to Talk

  Belly Kisses

  Burying My Husband

  BUT THEY SAY I WILL NOT MAKE IT

  When you are fat (and I am fat) the streets are full of

  soothsayers

  telling you how you will die.

  They all seem so anxious for my heart

  like it’s an unattended package at the airport

  so I move thru the world listening

  for my heart like it must be a clock

  swallowed by a crocodile.

  No,

  a canary that goes silent much too late.

  No,

  they are certain it is going to attack, my heart,

  like a hungry bear on a camp ground

  ripping a zipper down my chest, cracking

  my sternum like a cheap tent pole.

  No,

  I am not at all sorry for my size

  so I must be a barge which would make my heart a fish

  washed onto the deck

  GaspingFloppingSlamming scales off its body

  like an angry beauty queen ripping sequins from a dress

  that didn’t sparkle enough to win

  but then that would make my heart a beauty queen

  that can’t walk in heels …

  No,

  wait.

  My heart is an hourglass filled with gunpowder

  and at any given moment some wild spark

  is gonna blow me sky high

  so, I don’t know, maybe this is why I love the way I do

  with teeth and swallow and song and snarl

  and water and sparkle and consequence

  maybe this is why I show up to your front door

  out of breath and full of dazzle

  like this is the last ballyhoo

  and nothing at all can wait till the morning.

  Forgive me, they keep telling me that my heart is not my heart.

  They keep telling me that I am dying.

  This may be our last chance.

  REJECTION #1

  Dear MrTongueRing69,

  Thank you for your submission, however we were unable to read it as our office is not currently equipped with a way-back machine to travel to an era when your screen name was clever and probably somewhat alluring. I can only assume it read something like “A/S/L?” before launching into the screech-and-click dial-up-modem siren song of your people.

  Nonetheless, it is probably still safe to wish you well in finding a home for your cock.

  Kindest Regards,

  Nothing is Ok, Cupid Quarterly

  MIXED GIRL

  After Angel Nafis and Terrance Hayes

  Mixed Girl, White Mother

  Mixed Girl, Black Father

  Yes, really

  Mixed Girl, White Mother’s Hair

  Black Father’s Lips

  patient while you pick and choose

  what’s exotic enough

  sighs thru tired jokes about how she only gets half of

  Martin Luther King Day off work

  White Mother’s Guilt

  Black Father’s Survival

  Survivor’s Guilt

  Passing

  wonders if it’s called passing because something dies inside each time

  carries her blackness like Peter Pan’s shadow shot down and

  stitched desperately back to her heels

  Mixed Girl also Fat

  Yes, Fat

  Fat, Mixed Girl reconciled the word Fat

  passes slowly, a heavy drop of water

  passes race but not weight limits

  sighs thru tired jokes about black men loving fat white women

  living punchline

  Fat, Mixed Girl also Queer

  Yes, Really

  Queer, Fat, Mixed Girl’s pronouns are

  She/Her/Your Majesty

  femme

  triple threat invisible

  double agents as Straight Shameful White Lady

  sighs thru tired jokes about greed

  as sexual orientation

  admits to having mostly had relationships

  with cis-men

  no less attracted to women tho

  no less attracted to non-binary beauty tho
<
br />   probably thinks you’re cute

  probably wants to make out with you

  Yes, you

  Queer, Fat, Mixed Girl is a Feminist

  No shit.

  Yes, Feminist

  Feminist, Queer, Fat, Mixed Girl is full body intersection

  passing whiteness, passing straightness,

  passing weakness

  makes her a conceal carry revolt

  has one common enemy

  aims to gut the white supremacist patriarchy

  rouge her cheeks with his blood

  Feminist

  Queer

  Fat

  Mixed

  Girl

  knows he will

  never

  ever

  see her

  coming

  MY WHITENESS HITS ON ME IN A BAR

  You’re welcome.

  You hear me?

  I said you’re welcome

  for those eyes

  like your mother’s

  stolen sapphires

  when you could’ve had your father’s mud puddles.

  You’re welcome.

  They make you look so innocent

  so trusting.

  Don’t forget I got you that troubleless hair too

  The same hair that got you a good job

  or at least didn’t keep you from one.

  You really should be more grateful.

  Your skin is default nude

  default skin tone.

  No one assumes you are uneducated.

  I do that.

  For you.

  For Us.

  All of us.

  This ruling race of us.

  Which is better than them.

  Which deserves more than them.

  Is it so hard to show a little gratitude?

  It’s a compliment.

  The way the cops won’t doubt you/press your face into the dirt.

  The way bullets won’t hunt your light skin/your pink cheeks.

  The way I built this place a bomb shelter for you.

  Stop fighting for some part of you no one can see/wants to see.

  Stop fighting for people that don’t look like you.

  You got real lucky, girl.

  Don’t you feel lucky?

  Don’t you love the way I’ve made all of this easy for you?

  You should show me how much you love it.

  Show me with those colored-girl lips you ended up with.

  Kneel for me like you’re scrubbing a floor—I know

  you know how.

  That’s in your blood.

  I haven’t forgotten that you pass.

  Maybe you forgot that I am the one who crowned you

  queen of the paper bag prom

  but that can be our little secret.

  All you have to do is relax

  and let it happen.

  THE ART OF RIDING A TANDEM BIKE ALONE

  In the Museum of Broken Relationships

  there is a living diorama

  a real and breathing spinster in bloom

  coated in cat hair and cynicism.

  Watch, as she cooks dinner for one and eats it over the sink.

  Be amazed, as she ages alone save of course the cat

  (who is just as cantankerous as she).

  Behold, how she drinks bourbon straight from the bottle

  because it offers her a mouth to kiss.

  Witness, how she weeps until she dissolves

  and then wakes up to rebuild herself

  one salt grain at a time the next morning.

  Observe, the cavernous sigh as she realizes it will all have to be done

  again

  and again

  and again …

  See the actual butterflies from her very stomach

  which once danced with possibility

  pinned by their wings.

  Feast your eyes, on this true human rest stop.

  A motel that dreamed once of becoming a home

  silly temporary thing with soap-sliver hands

  and a body/a bed that held lovers as though

  they might actually stay.

  IN THE EVENT THE WIND IS KNOCKED OUT OF YOU

  Remember that this chest grasp

  this violent sigh

  this exodus is temporary

  nothing more than a spasm

  though the force that knocked

  it from you, the weight that

  dipped you to the dirt,

  the vortex kiss that put

  you on your back

  may leave some welt

  or knot or void,

  the air will return.

  Trust the bone nest cradling

  your pink precious lungs

  to mother the breath

  back home to you

  and also, to expand wide enough

  to sob or to sing

  or to just resume.

  COOKING WITH TEARS

  Because nothing brings a meal together quite like the right seasoning, what better seasoning than TEARS?

  Our very own tear ducts are the salt shakers of the face, so go ahead, tap into that sadness and cry over your meals for a truly nostalgic flavor sensation.

  Who among us doesn’t have fond childhood memories of Mom weeping over a hot stove top occasionally muttering about lost dreams before telling us everything is just fine before sending us outside to play until dinner? You can keep the tradition alive, even if just for yourself since you have failed in your womanly obligation to reproduce and your grandmother keeps hinting that it really would be fine if you are a lesbian.

  These days, synthetic tears are available for people who might be worried about their sadness intake but still crave the robust flavor of tears just like Mother used to make. As with most healthy substitutes, you will be sacrificing some flavor, but you can’t have it both ways.

  When throwing dinner parties, it may be important to remember that some of your guests may have removed tears from their diets due to the effect on the planet or some such nonsense (and despite the fact that not everyone has access to organic fair trade happiness) so it may be necessary to prepare a no-tears option to please all of your guests.

  After all, isn’t pleasing others what life’s all about?

  FEMME VISIBILITY

  My queerness

  is not unlike

  a cat on a leash.

  It’s awkward

  people don’t always understand why it’s happening

  or how it works

  but it’s not hurting anyone

  so it goes mostly unbothered.

  The difference

  is that you can see

  a cat

  on a leash.

  NOTES ON DEPRESSION

  I.

  I have clawed my way to okay and it will

  just have to do for now.

  I sent my body out ahead of me, a guide line tied to her foot

  hold her above me

  a sullen balloon woman.

  I wait to see how many scars she returns with before deciding

  whether to join the world whole

  or to leave her to sway with the wind and seem at peace

  a distraction, while I tunnel out.

  II.

  My latest hobby is screaming.

  I scream into things.

  It was just pillows at first,

  now it is anything I think can hold my trauma.

  I have haunted the whole house.

  III.

  There was a brilliant surprise party here 3 months ago. I have been unable to bring myself to toss out the wilted balloons or to sweep up the confetti. I didn’t want it to end. A celebration is just a way of begging the good things to stay. A false promise that we could always be just like this, a false promise worth clinging to, worth living in the aftermath of.

  A PLAGUE OF DOUBTS

  Maybe, if I did not

  try so hard

  panic so often />
  flinch so easily

  enjoy the attention from the married men

  fuck the man with the girlfriend every time

  he calls

  like the God-feeling of that balloon boy’s

  heart under my heel

  insist on standing up for myself

  choose my work over them

  need so much alone time

  leave the church

  give it up on the first date

  make them wait so long

  cry in front of them

  look so mean

  tell them I need them

  need them

  ignore the red flags

  search for the red flags in silence

  try to save them despite my own undertow

  compare this one to the last one

  compromise so little

  compromise so much

  take them at their word

  give them mine

  show off the scars

  miss the bus

  try to convince myself it is not real

  stay when I could still leave

  know my worth

  talk so loud

  have so many feelings

  want it so badly

  keep looking for it

  expect it—

  everyone keeps saying it happens when you least do

  HOW TO EAT YOUR FEELINGS: ANGER

  You will need:

  -2 to 3 boxes of Klondike Bars any flavor

  -1 jar of Nutella

  -1 polar bear costume

  Build an igloo around your head out of Klondike bars using Nutella

  as a bonding agent.

  Pretend you are a polar bear.

  Eat your head free.

  Release the rage.

  Feeds:

  One Very Angry Polar Bear

  GLORY IN TWO PARTS

  What you think you mean when you say that I Glorify Obesity

  is that I am an undeserved celebration,

  a gluttonous mass of unrepent,

  a patron saint of unhealth,

  a pageant of sloth and wheeze and uncontrol,

  a gasping-heart Madonna.

  You think you mean: how can she possibly raise her fat face

  to the sun in worship

  rather than submitting to the gravity of shame?

  that I am a sickness rolled in caramel and body glitter

  a fatted golden calf in a sugar-glazed crown,