​Diary Entry #16: About Using My Body
by Diannely Antigua​

​​The night will happen
on my parents’ bed, after a forced family
dinner of bread and cheese, after my panties flood
 
to mush. I’m trying to turn my stomach
into a wedding. So I’ll call the neighbor. So I’ll
take off my jean shorts,
 
one brown leg at a time, an angel
falling from my pelvis. Then I’ll try to teach him
blame, what dream-speak can do to a virgin. I’ll
 
show him the wall, the rim of the drain,
the sound of water from the sink. I’ll show him
how to clean what’s left of my body,
 
a silent pussy with no friends.
And he’ll speak to it better than all the boys
who have grabbed me and made videos
 
of me on a mattress. He’ll say:
Let’s almost fuck in my van. Let’s
tilt your anus. And it will throb, the space
 
between the first and second time— 
Repeat after me: I am the ocean. I am a liver. I am
the bracelet on my wrist. 

​Diannely Antigua is a Dominican American poet and educator, born and raised in Massachusetts. She received her B.A. in English from the University of Massachusetts Lowell where she won the Jack Kerouac Creative Writing Scholarship, and received her MFA in poetry from NYU where she was awarded a Global Research Initiative Fellowship to Florence, Italy. She is the recipient of fellowships from CantoMundo and Community of Writers, and a nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her book Ugly Music, forthcoming from YesYes Books, was chosen for the 2017 Pamet River Prize. Her poems can be found in Day One, Vinyl, The Adroit Journal, Cosmonauts Avenue, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Her heart is in Brooklyn.

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​In Suburbia by ​​Diannely Antigua
June 2018

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