Current
Issue
Volume 12.1
Tanya Tuzeo
—
night queen
i think of a dress
made of mercury as it surges
back and forth
over my joyful body.
copper glitter shadow crescents eyes
kept closed so that a galaxy emerges
and blackened feet make invisible wine
sousing the air with endless dance.
my peers in escape—
how many interesting people there are!
i’ve forgotten how to be this way,
carefree, body a limitless instrument.
night is now a sober reign
grueling and administrative—
the baby wants milk,
though he’s not a baby
and doesn’t need milk.
i wake always,
crowned by rage,
my throne:
the pale yellow
dairy-stained
pillows, flattened
by morning.
a mother’s night
in the orange bottle rest two pills,
motionless oysters concealed from ultraviolet life.
i can’t tell which one is for sleep
and which one is for suffering,
my mother gave them to me,
charity from deep in her tattered Coach bag.
baby asleep, pillows pretend to be my body
propping his fragile night
soon he will scream,
mouth, a coral polyp ruckling.
i wait for the chemical cool
esophagus burning at a single point
then go to him, bed nomad
roaming eucalyptus sheets
offer bottle of water-milk
but he wants my body.
we assemble into a craggy caravan,
cross wet pillow shams, guarding sleep
somewhere overhead a queen of night
cactus blooms. i inhale its violet tobacco,
shift my child
my ambiguous rose.
Tanya Tuzeo is a librarian and mother to two children and two collections of unpublished poetry, “We Live in Paradise” and “Miserable People”. Her work appears in various literary publications, is a finalist in the Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest 2022 and longlisted in Frontier Poetry’s Nature & Place prize.
