Ode to Weevils
Leia K. Bradley
Diana Dors. Always licking blonde into your rearview, I am
always the past, always others. Today you lick my pearl earring,
today you say I’m Grace Kelley. Kelly. I am always kissing Es
into everything to make it longer, more lush, Anne of Avonlea
with a gable of green riding crops. I want to mount
all these selves like some daring steed, be my own
dashing, armor’d savior, but alas
I am too busy spinning yarns
of silk stories, silk
slipping past my shoulders,
wearing less and becoming more.
I’m a fur coat on the hotel floor, I’m a two-hundred-dollar manicure
picking weevils out of her oatmeal tin—
I admire them, how they burrow their way in
and make their home
wherever they please. I wish I had
their harp antennae, I wish I had
their dedication to fuck you, mine now.
Cinnamon, hot water, oatmeal twice a day to keep the hunger at bay, anyway,
I am an empty kitchen, I am
altitude sickness sans snowy peak—
I am nausea that lurches, nights
that spin hymns to something darker, someone
denitely more weak.
And yes, it feels damn good to throw my stilettos across the room, to sink down
on the kitchen floor
for a good old-fashioned meltdown and make eyes with
the still empty mouse-trap. I salute the little grey fellow. Look at us,
barely avoiding the sticky grime of death. Still waking up but only
to hunger to hunger
all over again.
Leia K. Bradley (they/she) is a backwoods Georgia born, Brooklyn based lesbian writer and performance artist and an MFA Poetry candidate at Columbia University, where she also was awarded the Undergraduate Writing Teaching Fellowship for 2023-24. She has work out now or forthcoming in Poetry Project, Aurore, Wrongdoing, Ghost City, Moss Puppy, Versification, JMWW, trampset, Wild Greens, Peach Fuzz, Miniskirt, Full House Literary, West Trade Review, and more, with her poem “Settle(d)” chosen as the Editor’s Choice Best Overall pick for Penumbra Magazine’s 2022 Pride issue. She is also the Featured Author of Anodyne Magazine for 2023. After climbing out from the coffin of her first divorce, she is accepting love and lust letters through her twitter @LeiaKBradley or instagram @MadameMort.
© Variant Literature Inc 2023