Daniella Toosie-Watson

Praying After Sex is my Genre

On the night we met, my new lover and I fucked
and then, prayed to thank God
for great sex. In the morning, he is a vision,
but I’m handed a cup of ginger tea.
I dreamt you were here, and here
you are. The water boiled. Sleep took me. Clouds
pinked my lover’s face.
We prayed naked. God watched. Be careful it’s hot,
but that’s not why I don’t take the cup—I was tired.
You’re a vision, I smile and touch his face.
Tiny lights and vines braid around the black pipes above
his bed. My eyes blur. His perfect mouth kisses me.
He plays Hiatus Kaiyote—Honey don't you, know—then asks me
to edit his poetry manuscript. I put on my editor’s hat.
Fucking is my wheelhouse. An old lover would play gospel
during intimacy instead of something sexy
to prevent my panic attacks. When I dream,
I usually wake up alone. Except when I hallucinate.
One night in August, I woke up next to my childhood
best friend. She was smiling into a distance.
It’s March now.
His writing is expository in ways that don’t serve the poem.
I take the ginger tea. He kisses my forehead. I blow the cloud,
but the tea is still breathing. He asks me
to leave. My first hallucination this year
was a flower—opening, and opening, and opening.

Daniella Toosie-Watson (she/they) is a poet, visual artist and educator from New York. They have received fellowships and awards from the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, VONA, the InsideOut Detroit Literary Arts Project and the University of Michigan Hopwood Program. A winner of the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest in 2020, Daniella has been published in Callaloo, Virginia Quarterly Review, the Paris Review, Poet Lore, the Cincinnati Review and elsewhere. They are currently the profile writer for the Kennedy Center’s Next 50 initiative and a Visiting Professor in the BFA Writing Program at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Daniella received their MFA from the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers’ Program.