Cassandra Traina

ANTHONY BOURDAIN & OTHER MEN I LOVE

Anthony Bourdain is caressing my face and he’s saying, I know, baby.
And then I am gone with the forceful presence of coming:
which means I dream that others feel my absence and I am missed.
I do not want to be the dead girl caressed flat, turned over for love.
Are you smiling at me in my dream because you’re thinking of me?
Who is Anthony Bourdain, really?
Is my father my mother's greatest invention?
Is my mother my father's gentlest passion?
Am I a product of gentleness and when does it all come back
in combustion: I overflow.
I will kiss you as soon as I’m done telling you I don't want to kiss you.
I want you to touch me and then I want you to stay so far away
that you can’t even barely see me.
I want you to see through me.
I want you, I want you, I want you, and I want you.
You work so hard to be understood and the understanding works to
determine who is right and who should shut the fuck up and go to hell.
And hell works to prove heaven and must be hell to do so.
I am everything and nothing, and that means everything and nothing,
and children and children,
and her bedroom as seen from mine,
and his plea,
and her turning.

Cassandra Traina is a recent graduate of Sarah Lawrence College. She lives in New York and France. Publications include Love & Squalor, The Croaker, orangepeel Magazine, Sour Cherry Mag, Action, Spectacle, Free the Verse, Third Iris Zine, and Healthline Magazine. She is featured in Querencia Press’s Winter 2023 Anthology. In 2020 she received an honorable mention from The Academy of American Poets College Prize for her poem NOV 26 // THANKSGIVING MORNING. In July and December 2022 she was an artist-in-residence at Chateau Orquevaux International Artist Residency. In September 2022 she was a writer-in-residence at Cuttyhunk Island Writers' Residency. As a feminist writer, Cassandra writes poetry that explores family history, sexuality, her relationship with memory, and gender.