Family Values
My grandfather fucked his niece, leaving in
my father the fear of a vengeful god:
the male libido – no generation
may go unpunished. He thought he was safe
when he had two daughters. He couldn’t know
one would become a whore. She wants to get
paid for her work, tied up and slapped, unheld.
Do you know, a father will protect his
daughter like an untrained dom to his sub:
poorly. Her tongue is open and her eyes
are wet. A face marred by semen greed and
warmth. The body touched by capital is
the body at full potential and cost.
She gives until she is dead inside but
alive with caste iron lust, greased and hot.
She is unclean; she ages well; she’s won.
Do It To Julia
Like when Winston says ‘Do it to Julia’
At the end of 1984 – put the rats on her face
Kill the girl you love
Then you are worse than dead, you’re nothing
For her you were god. You were salvation itself.
You have forsaken what was made in your image
When a man gags on his creation he will be forgiven if his mouth was just too full
My first lover told me you are the most understanding person I’ve ever met
I know I am; I am a woman after all
Anxiety expands at a fickle speed until it overtakes the body
Does it happen like that
When you choose yourself over who you love
Does it happen as fast; a yes sustained by feral panic
When you kill what you love
Is it suicide?
The Art of Giving Good Head
One, I allow you to gag me like an
amphetamine object. Do as you get
told. There’s no subtext. But the whole time I'm
thinking how beautiful you are. Because
you are close to no edge. I want to pour
ecstasy on you. I want to take what
is inside of you and make it outside.
When you push my hair off my cheek for a
clean shot my neck pulls toward you and away
like the toddler who wants her mother but
also perceives her mother’s failure to
love her. I can't any longer ask you
for things. It’s rude to speak when you haven’t
been spoken to I heard somewhere. You say
your presence is answer enough but can
the body really speak? Or rather: can
the body in psychic pain decipher
another body’s cryptogram? The girl
not a prodigy but a bruising want.
Once, I think I’m the most dramatic bitch
in the world but then I thought I love you,
and now I am certain only that your
cum contains trace poisons because how else
could I explain this slow and painful death.
Lullaby
I told Julia I wanted to fuck a married man
And a distance opened:
She does not possess
And therefore cannot understand
The impulse toward ruin
A child came out of her mother’s body stained with her fluid
And his past
Becoming the only dirty piece of a sterile room
If I’d been born into water
The stain could have been lifted
The baby sees her body change her environment, materially
From fluid to fluid and womb to bathwater
She floats
Oh the water is red now from my body or hers or his
Or did something land here that I did not see
Slipping out into a hospital pulled by a strange worker’s hands
(in this case, a woman, but not always)
A stain sticks
And her first thought, before I’m alive
Is: I’m marked
The stillness of a secret
Edging under my eyelids
Into my mouth
I can swallow a secret like it’s my pride
Meaning: I can’t
Sophia Giovannitti is a twenty-four-year old queer woman artist and writer, focused on lust, family, and emotional labor.