A Love Letter to the Tactile
After Chris Farley
Because I am good at inventing reasons I belong here,
I buy a “burnt sienna dress” with bell sleeves & identify as
someone who loves the 70’s. I go through a Dolly Parton
phase, play “9 to 5” every morning as I curate a business-
casual look to then walk in circles around the neighborhood,
recording the colors of the prettiest houses for a map in my diary.
I slurp down oysters & wait to absorb that same potential
for pearlescent shine. It’s not that I’m frivolous, just so good
at wanting everything outside myself, so good at coveting light
I forget you can see through it. I am a rainbow against the horrific
concrete business districts, uniform in literally every major city
in the US. I only believe in what I can touch so why would I
waste time on my own supernatural antics? Concept: At the end
of this poem, the audience applauds like I am Tinkerbell
& the only thing actualizing my body is their faith in it. Concept:
a horoscope is just the stars ordering cocktails after a long
workweek of being scientific & pragmatic & stuff. I’m trying
to be fun, goddammit. But all there is to do is collect acrylic nails
as they fracture from my own hands & become tiny funerals
for each time my own wants got taken seriously. Every morning
I make myself beautiful is an entertaining of superstition.
I apply for another job & stir basil I grew into the soup for luck.
When nobody is watching, I exist so much more than I can
afford. I guess I am “young” & “full of stars” & “a fervent believer
in witchcraft” & “a blue eyeshadow enthusiast” & “raucously
insisting on my queerness” & “love to show off at least my tits,
ass or legs at any given moment.” But I promise, when you’re
here, all you’ll see is a velour dress, floating, without a head.
Sara Mae is a white, queer fashion witch and community organizer raised between Baltimore and Annapolis, Md. She is the 2017 IWPS rep for Slam Free Or Die, a 2018 Emerson College CUPSI team member, and a 2018 Boston Poetry Slam NPS team member. She is the winner of the inaugural Peach Mag Bronze Prize, selected by Morgan Parker. Their first chapbook, Priestess of Tankinis, is out via Game Over Books. In her free time, she is learning burlesque in the studio or in her bedroom, and writing songs for her project Day Night Dress. If they could go to dinner with any famous person, they wouldn’t care who it was as long as there was Old Bay on the food.