Poetry: Selections From Fish Dell’Angelo

The Girl with a Laundromat in her Stomach 

 

Silly starfish girl, 

Flat on my stomach, 

Bare assed, face flat, 

I was drowning, swallowing bed sheets, gagging on pillow feathers,

I swear he moved like a beast, consuming my insides, 

 

He had no flesh, no skin or bone, 

Or maybe he had way too much, 

I cannot remember what he looked like, 

All I remember of him was that his touch was all knife, 

My chest is lined with scars, 

and I can still feel the way he carved me open, 

Is it possible that he was made out of blades? 

 

I swear to you the mosquitoes and flies on the wall wept at the sight,

they too felt helpless, 

they too were unable to heave his body off mine, 

And when you ask them why they didn’t shout, they plead

I swear to you, 

“the buzz of flies means nothing to beasts” 

 

And I swear after, when I looked in the mirror I saw nothing but blood,

He stabbed every inch of my flesh, besides my face, which he never saw; 

 

I promise you, if you were there your face too, would have lost all its color,

you too would have clung to smoke colored stuffed animals, 

 

ever since my stomach has bulged, a lump in my throat, bigger than my fist,

pregnant with terror, 

 

but when I told her I loved her, I coughed up a duvet, 

when she struck a match, 

and we watched the mattress, and sheets burn 

we embraced in the ashes 

and made snow angels out of knives and beasts.

Hickey 

 

I am trying to fall asleep in the arms of a lion, 

I want to sleep alone, 

He is taking up too much of my twin sized dorm mattress, 

He is shedding all over my sheets, 

but 

He flashed his big sharp teeth and told me he refuses to leave, 

He must “protect me”, 

If I had a jaw as forceful, 

If I could crush bones with my tongue, 

I would ask 

Protect me from what? 

Lions? 

Lions in my bed, 

Lions in my cunt, 

Lions in the now thick air in my room, 

Lions in my E cigarette and in my hair, 

 

In the bright morning’s safe recounting, 

I don't feel proud and pretty, 

I don't stick out my neck, toss and turn my hair, flash circles of sickly yellow-purple,

I can see a bruise for what it is now; 

 

He stings as I drag green concealer down my neck, 

I look to see if the black-and-blue on my inner thigh has faded every time I take a piss, 

 

I can still feel the drip-drip-drip of his sweat onto my face, 

It came on like rain, from a top me, and I could not stop it, 

At least the regular style water torture wouldn’t have stained my comforter,

his onion smell ingrained itself into the fibers of my carpet, 

The stink could not be covered by detergents or essential oils, 

The stench merely folded itself inside of the beauty of lavender and jasmine, 

 

The way I spent hours picking course beige hairs off every surface,

still I keep finding them, 

As if for months the little hairs have stayed suspended mid air, 

Telling me they refuse to leave, 

I even watched one circle the shower drain, 

Meaning it had been clinging to my body all this time. 

Mauled and maimed in the name of pleasure,

I see a bruise for what it is now.

Magic Wands 

 

Last night I had a dream that I began to pluck an ingrown hair on my breast,

Instead of a little thing, hair flowed from my chest like a magician’s handkerchief,

I tugged as a hair longer than I have ever grown continued to rise from me,

with each inch of hair that sprouted from my body, my breast began to deflate,

its absence grew from the middle, 

I curled up on the bathroom floor with a full head of hair in my hands and,

a crater, a vortex where my breast had been, 

I continued my day, 

Lopsided; 

 

when I was thirteen years old my mother begrudgingly drove me to school most

mornings we spoke with the our eyes locked on the road, 

“your breasts are your magic wands” she told me, 

 

so I memorized the dialogue to my favorite TV shows, and pages of my favorite books,

and I laid as a doll in the back seat of my best friend’s car as she stood out in the

freezing cold snow with a little knife in her pocket and her eyes locked,

I retreated into the filing cabinets in my mind where I kept full episodes of sitcoms and

pages of thriller novels, I was already there by the time he took out the least magical

wand in the world, 

It doesn’t matter who he is, 

they all have the same face, the same sick, 

I returned with more money than we’d ever held in our hands and we blew it all on new piercings and weed and gas station trips and the like, 

and I thought I was magic.

 

 

 

 

 

Fish Dell’Angelo is a 22-year-old nonbinary, lesbian poet. They are an aspiring writer and currently an undergraduate at Pace University, majoring in Peace and Justice Studies. In the fall, they will join Columbia University’s MFA program.