A Poem by Hannah Rego

Author: Poetry Editor

May 29, 2019

This week, a poem by Hannah Rego.

Postcard from the Hudson

I miss the pillow fights. Don’t hold back as you slam a body pillow across my body from the full height of your head. There’s no pleasure as great as being hurt by the one who ignores you. When we were young, I waited & palmed your carved stone alligator. If you caught a baby lizard now between your hands, large or small, I would be just as quiet. As when we held our breath as long as we could underwater. As when we sat poolside frosting the tips of our hair blonde with lemon juice. When we traded Pokémon cards, I knew you were doing everything you could to be dealt the best hand. It wasn’t surprising. Nothing surprised me. Now, when I meet you again, in him, in him, in him, I laugh when he calls me darling. I answer texts right away & wait right away to be answered days later. The last boy I played video games with was a man in a bar. Streetfighter, old arcade. Who won? I ate his tacos in his high school teacher’s lounge. I took his books on accident. In Miami, did you lay pipes? Did you snort? In Kentucky, did you work in a factory? Home to home? I, busy with books & rocks & women & men & hallucinating to impress you, have failed to ask when, if at all, you have been happy. Where? How long? The water before me laps curiously. As a box marked as a fragile thing. The last time I came I thought of the last time I came with another person. Not that I would know, but he isn’t anything like you. Last week I watched porn ft. a trans man for the first time. I start hormones tomorrow. When we played halo, & even I played, & you, impressed I’d stuck you with a grenade, exploded, it was the glint in your eye. It’s you.

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HANNAH REGO is a writer from Louisville, Kentucky. They are an MFA candidate at the University of Arizona and a founding editor of ctrl+v, a journal of collage. Their work appears or is forthcoming in Bettering American Poetry Vol. 3, Ninth Letter, BOOTH and elsewhere.