The Cure for Grief is Motion
My doctor asks if I am aware that I’ve gained 30 pounds in two years. I know but I don’t, that no matter how much I drop my ass for you, am more expansive when I fuck you, the places I put my faceless tongue, you will never fathom what to do with me. I made the mistake of dancing with you to my future wedding song. A Cape Verdean melody that translates in English to “friendship/falseness.” Amizadi/Falsidade. I sent you the YouTube link! You like it! I didn’t have to pull the trigger to be charged with my own murder. Listen, I don’t have time to exonerate myself. Anyway, I forget what I’ve done.
Many men. Wish death upon me.
Blood in my eye dog and I can’t see.
I’d been playing Snake on my gold Nokia phone many years ago when my middle school boo Steven called to say, YOU’RE GOING TO END UP LIKE BEYONCÈ IN CARMEN. What a waste of my minutes. If I keep playing these games. Kept. Am. Listen, I was and am living in a silk suit trying not to sweat. I am unemployed so it’s easy to plan my nights around you. I spend the day calibrating. I wash linens. I shave. I curate a Spotify playlist. I hate the words curate, collab, content, brand, influencer, aesthetic, booking, info, traveler, wanderlust and I heard you fell for an Instagram model. In a fight, I’m on top when I tell you that I am Frank Ocean. There is nothing chill about me.
I don’t feel the love no more.
I’ve been waiting for you on the dance floor.
Before whirling around my room, we always found time to weep the sins of our parents. Weak for how your rugged edged hips fall with mine swaying no to authority. If I could tell you what to do: Oh! My dear dancer dance with me forever. For I am not free without. Steam room asphyxiation. 3:30 am roller coaster leaving off track. When are you free next? It felt so good on my computer chair. Staring my generously heavy self in the mug. Come inside me prove I’m the only one? I hate the word love in a poem. I love dancing with you. Slow wine my idea of a good time. Pasada. Soca. Funaná. Listen, I’m new here. You’re an island boy not from mine you’re islands I used to dance with back home. Gyrate so close I’d misstep thinking about marriage. I cannot marry someone who works on an empty stomach. Using men to avoid swaying in front of non-dancers is the new I swear I’m not here to use your body to measure the misfortune of time.
Shauna Barbosa (@shaunabarbosa) is the author of the poetry collection Cape Verdean Blues (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, AGNI, Iowa Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Poetry Society of America, PBS Newshour, Lit Hub, and others. She was nominated for PEN America’s 2019 Open Book Award and was a 2018 Disquiet International Luso-American fellow. Shauna received her MFA from Bennington College in Vermont and is currently working on a compilation of stories.