Poetry, Week 1: Kristen Brida

Selfie Sonnet
[Woman in green lace dress takes a selfie in a coffee shop]

I absorb my lace, a tattoo instead of a new layer. I pick
my mint skin, I chip like dollar store nail polish, a glade
of meadow ash. I invite my future to join me at the back
of my throat, mirror in lieu of a uvula, teardrop-shaped.
I begin to apologize for my confrontation, but quickly retract
I tilt to catch my future in my body’s glass. I want myself as regurgitate—

an intimacy fragmented and bare, begging to be
combed through my own stink, where lipstick shade
electric petal and lean cuisine & cola slurpee
vomit peel my mint skin and mingle. what I’ve made
and myself: no longer separate. I’ve pearled a new being
where others find god in a sky, I find god in what I secrete.

In my throat-backed mirror, I liquid laugh. My acid cracks
glass and until the shards can reach the moon, I am continually halved.

Kristen Brida's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Pinch, Poetry.onl, Fairy Tale Review, The Journal, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from George Mason University. She currently works in academic publishing and volunteers at a queer-owned, nonprofit bookstore in Philadelphia.