Two Poems

The Formation of a Black Hole

i.
         My lover & I need 
to cross a bridge.
                                   It is chained closed
for the night.                                                                      My lover
                                   climbs over                                                leaves me
                                                                to hunt antelope
distinguish poison
                                                 from sustenance       X marks the X.

        I take a piece
                    of charcoal & draw
until my body
                                              is covered

ii
Found dead                                             my lover
 is stolen                                    hooked
                                                                up to machines—
                   his tongue pickled                                    in salt             extracting
        new blessings.
          It says do not
                                                                                                  tempt.

iii
                                                My lover still
            —us unfound                                         his
                                   particles move
                                                                                     in mephitic air.
        My lover is
                            a hypernova.                                                 I cut
                                                         apple skins                         pour
2% milk into
                    a jug―any size―keep
pouring until
                                                                          it sucks my vulva outside
         until he screams on the other side

                                                            of the house,

                       the hummingbirds are gone.

Mary & Joseph Build a House Under the Brooklyn Bridge

I wanted to pull out 
each other’s intestines 
to make guitar strings 
see my hand move

around yr liver straight up 
to yr lungs, stop 
all breathing. For exactly

one minute, I will 
extract each memory, 
attach words, then 
reinsert. You 

will never know—it will look 
like a nuclear bomb went off 
in the room of yr body. 

We never bothered to turn on 
the lamp—only unbuckled 
yr pants, hoisted off my shirt. 

Behind yr mouth 
is the text I want to read—
we don’t speak—barely 
audible moans coalescing 

among white noise. 100 
yrs ago, there was no 
white noise, only the earth 
speaking out loud. 

As humans, we try 
to find perfect pitch—
there’s a torpedo going off 
outside. It won’t stop. 

---

Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Marys of the Sea (forthcoming 2016, ELJ Publications), and Xenos (forthcoming 2017, Agape Editions). She received her MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She is also the founder of Yes, Poetry, as well as the managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine. Some of her writing has appeared in Prelude, The Atlas Review, The Feminist Wire, BUST, Pouch, and elsewhere. She also leads workshops at Brooklyn Poets.