FOUR POEMS by CAITLIN VILLACRUSIS
CATALINA
Mama made me to be a saloon girl,
petticoat pulled up, “show me a pearly moon,”
‘cause love’s at an all-time low out here
& law’s eaten me up. No strings attached,
but there’s no strings left in a corset
like mine. Mama, how do I forgive my crimes
without forgiving those stray dry winds,
mouths kissed with blood pooling
from lips inside to out (cowboy/loverboy
blamed heatwaves, asked if I was
burning or blushing, & soaked up my red,
blind to the things heat makes me do)?
Before I knew gluttony, Mama
taught me to slice lust like a cactus.
Show me a pearly moon, it said
and spewed out booze. Men called me
nymph, so I had to claim the thorned forest.
When I was a child, I was merely succulent.
typographic soap opera
AFTER ADRIENNE RICHwhen i broke up with garamond, it took my syntax
and my sensibility. stole our scripted conversations of
nostalgic drama, and renamed them all. my rendition:
life is now lovelier in times new roman. become a verb
that forgets format and devices and instead pilots
the damn poem. design the insides of my mind but the
better parts of it. on this page, on this flat plane
of existence, garamond can’t control the adverb
propelling me (never being or loving. forever modifies
longingly.), so in the love story between the action,
my revision is loveless. pick apart at a phrase (leave just a verb)
until you violently kill it, and the poem force-feeds
each noun like a list. here noun. my noun. noun & noun.
so the sentence submerges.
& you’re left with articles. garamond left me with “the.”
next, garamond left me with nothing. english broke. subject
verb object. subject object verb elsewhere. strip it down. noun
verb noun. no clauses, no support, no family. to be is
my only savior, but what if it’s choking (or it be choking)
on all the nouns? don’t bother revising. take your verb,
your survivor, and drown it in times new roman. disgraced
but hopeful. it goes
to the next hand on
the clock. synonym for plane. motion. it’s all doing
the same motion. don’t modify this love now.
syntactically i couldn’t care. everything is just a diagram
for something larger. “the” is the
lovechild of this. a pure times new roman sentence.
instructions for anya taylor-joy in case her husband cheats on her
that child-minded cat god of a girlfriend hates you
loving up other fangs. she’s got a bomb in her pocket,
beloved fang in her hand, but she’ll never leave the pocket
of grass where she waits for you to put out the fire
splitting her heart into two, waiting and waiting for the fire
to die out. you’ll never find her. you’ll never reach her.
you’ll die before she lights the fuse on both you and her.
you’ll go home, make hot tea, and read her favorites,
and she’ll watch from the window as you read her favorites
to declawed lovers she doesn’t know. imagined scars
on the faces of declawed lovers she doesn’t know, scars
on future ghosts she doesn’t want to know. pull the frames
of your nameless ghosts off the shelf before she’s framed
for murder: a child-minded cat god’s mugshot made for you.
FLORIDA MAN Dances on Top of Police Cruiser to Ward Off Vampires
FLORIDA MAN Obscures Beyonce and Taylor Swift on His Stage
FLORIDA MAN Disappoints Lawmakers, Taxpayers
FLORIDA MAN Makes Them Question Why God Gave Them Government in the First Place
FLORIDA MAN Reserves Right to Flip Them Off
FLORIDA MAN is Insulted, so
FLORIDA MAN Breaks God’s Bones
FLORIDA MAN Moves the Apostrophe, Becomes a God Too
FLORIDA MAN Destroys Landscapes
FLORIDA MAN Burns Forests
FLORIDA MAN Drowns Cities, Efforts Funded by SeaWorld
FLORIDA MAN Completes Pokemon GO Goal, Defaces Earth in the Process
FLORIDA MAN Leaves Florida Alone
FLORIDA MAN Distributes Fangs to Every Publix Shopper
FLORIDA MAN Imprisons Twilight Fans, Says “Fake Fuckers Don’t Deserve to be Vampires”
FLORIDA MAN Has Lips Pulled Apart, Vocal Cords Ripped Out by Ex-Wife
FLORIDA MAN Denounces Ex-Wife, as Every Man Does
FLORIDA MAN’s Ex-Wife Wears Scarlet Letter
FLORIDA MAN Discovers Fox News
FLORIDA MAN Denounces Ex-Wife on Live Television
FLORIDA MAN Drunkenly Becomes Republican, Runs for President
FLORIDA MAN Beats Trump, Literally
FLORIDA MAN Kills His First Floridian, Trump
FLORIDA MAN Lights The Breakers Hotel on Fire, Burned Down a Third Time
FLORIDA MAN Resurrects All Tycoons, Enslaves Them
FLORIDA MAN Gets Bored
FLORIDA MAN Waits
FLORIDA MAN Waits
FLORIDA MAN Waits
FLORIDA MAN Waits
FLORIDA MAN Waits
FLORIDA MAN Complains the Tycoons Don’t Work Hard or Fast Enough, Cuts Pay
FLORIDA MAN Contemplates Unions
FLORIDA MAN Contemplates the Wrong Union, Becomes Mathematician
FLORIDA MAN Resurrects Greek Mathematicians, Pythagoras Slaughtered a Second Time
FLORIDA MAN Becomes Math
FLORIDA MAN Gets Sued by Florida Mom
FLORIDA MAN Absorbs Karen, Flicks Florida Mom into Hell with Gucci Bag
FLORIDA MAN Resents College Board, Accidentally Garnering Youth Generation’s Support
FLORIDA MAN Fixes Math, No One Smarter than a Fifth Grader
FLORIDA MAN Sends Idiots into Space
FLORIDA MAN Realizes Submarines Don’t Go into Space
FLORIDA MAN Continues to Watch Implosion Amusingly
FLORIDA MAN Goes Viral on TikTok for Mansplaining Implosion
FLORIDA MAN Starts Podcast, Soberingly Becomes Republican
FLORIDA MAN Marries Karen, Realizes American Dream
FLORIDA MAN Rebuilds America
FLORIDA MAN Appoints Self as President
FLORIDA MAN Quotes Ayn Rand in Inaugural Speech
FLORIDA MAN Leads Police in War Against Vampires
Caitlin Villacrusis (she/her) is a Filipina-American poet and a self-confessed pessimist. She is an Adroit Journal Poetry Mentee, a South Florida Youth Poet Ambassador and Miami Book Fair “Speak Up” Student Ambassador, a poetry editor at Hot Pot Magazine and The Lunar Journal, and more. Her work has been recognized by Gigantic Sequins and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers and is published forthcoming in COUNTERCLOCK Journal and Sophon Lit. She can be found screaming about Victoria Chang on Instagram at @catrose2022, Twitter at @caitlinvwrites, or at caitlinvillacrusis.carrd.co.