ars poetica

After Amiri Baraka and Jamila Woods

Poems are bullshit unless they are
a coil of hair above a nipple, a photograph
taken in warm light, an unadorned wool blanket,
each plane of skin you kiss and kiss like a bird
splitting bark for worms. I want poems
that are your mother’s paintings, a tin espresso pot
born the same year as you, the soaring feeling
of fingers scaffolding a thigh. I want a sweat poem,
rose oil poems, poems to be used as lube
in a pinch. I want poems that find a soft place to burrow,
or to unfurl and dry out at last, like a leaf.
Poems that are a dream about giving birth
to a boiling Great Lake, and raising it up with you
in your old house. Poems like that house’s
worn hardwood floors, the ones that yelp
with pleasure at your every movement.

Stefania Gomez is a queer writer, radio producer, and teaching artist from Chicago's South Side. She received her BA from Brown in 2017, and has work in the Offing, Missouri Review, and Sinking City Review. Her chapbook, ONCE I LOVED A COWBOY, is forthcoming from Ghost City Press. She works at the Poetry Foundation.