A DATING PROFILE THAT HAS BEEN PARTIALLY FILLED IN WITH A SMARTPHONE’S PREDICTIVE TEXT FEATURE and other poems by Linette Reeman

[after Madeline Lessing]

My name is: HELLO BEAUTIFUL I AM ALIVE TODAY AND PHEW BOY AM I DOING SOMETHING WRONG

My age is: There will probably be factors about this that make you feel gross.

I live in: pain. Everyone I’m dating live[s/d] in pain. But it’s okay, because soon these bandages will be ‘after.’ Soon, we will smash the hospital and love, too.

I was born: with murder in the discourse. Goodnight, I am going to make sure I bleed out this week. Goodnight, even my name is irritating. Goodnight, I flipped the life-switch off and in a different time zone your teeth started to hurt.

My body: is not pleasant to look at. My body is here visiting. My body escaped from touching the same way that we slept.

I am looking for: another plane of existence to come home to. Hello, beautiful.

I enjoy: baroque architecture; abandoned sidewalk couches that say “free” but they mean “difficult”; forgetting to take photographs of food before eating it; being purposeful about fucking.

My ideal partner: is whatever. This is less important than you think.

My turn-ons are: really brave men who have done badly and love it.

My turn-offs are: you, doing anything. The hospital’s yawning, helpless mouth. You, picking teeth out of your hair. A hospital bed, and someone touching themselves under the sheets. The sheets, moving. You, moving, in pain. You, or, anything, in pain.

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A SHORT LINEAGE OF RENTERS’ NOSTALGIA

“Tonight, I am the patron saint / of sharp and shiny objects–” -Phil West

the ceiling in the music room is glitter-crusted.
i want to tell you how it got like that, but it was
before i lived here. my bedroom contains
stage-lights. this is before i realized i could
move them, so we make slow fuckery of my
bedsheets in stage right’s quarter-dim.
you want to know how i got so lucky to live
here. a dozen painted mouths circus from
different levels along the stairwell. sometimes
it is 2 AM and someone is teaching them-self
how to coax a banjo into a romantic thing.

it was an accident, i truth out against your
back. last summer kicked me off-campus
and i had to learn how to say good-bye
from a distance. or, last summer everyone
moved to where they wanted to be from
and left shallow wounds for tender parasites
to nose against until they found something
habitable. or, just good                         timing.

Linette Reeman (they/them pronouns) is an Aries from the Jersey Shore, so they’re not sure what you mean by ‘speed limit.’ They have work published or forthcoming in Blueshift Journal, Maps for Teeth, FreezeRay, Public Pool, and others. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Bettering American Poetry nominee, Linette is on the executive board of the Philadelphia Fuze Poetry Slam, is the reigning Grand Slam Champ of Loser Slam, and is completing their BA in History at Rowan University. // LINETTEREEMAN.TUMBLR.COM