Valerie Deus

SOMEWHERE

                                                                          Sometimes I eat. 

                                                            Sometimes I enjoy it. 

                                              The people I watch, watch me too.

                          They treat me like I’m from nowhere, a “somewhere” that’s no place at all. 

                                              Too far away to be real.

                                                              I treat them like they’re all yesterday / no tomorrow.

RIPE SUMMER

Oh, grab a piece of curb and eat 
The street so crispy it’s late 

Oh blood, running rudely 
down these legs

cover your eyes!
Oh, He is penthouse mad- like 
On parade in full uniform 

Oh, you’re torn from a corner of Ditmas! 
Dawn is fresh from rolling down the hill
and puts their front teeth in my business 

Over ripe summer 
Smelling of cloves and frankincense 

Birds leak from my brain 
we are somewhere in full view 
Our hidden identities up to no good 

GUILAINE

I’ll be honest with you
I don’t read faces 
I use google translate
to describe 
where it hurts  
on this landscape 
Of unfamiliar features 
But I don’t speak mime either 
Saint sleepwalker 

Can we run away? 
Look how the
red brake lights
glisten in the frosty 
early morning hours?

your February frame 
gestures goodbye today 
I'm not sure I remember 
you ever dusted in sunlight
Using all your words instead 
of looking to me answers
Can we be a handful of natural ingredients 
Instead of being ribbed for someone’s pleasure?

RED CHURCH

We laugh aloud
at the bar
near the airport
me, in more than most
Tuesdays deserve 
chapstick & leg hair
you, in your everyday blues 
soap suds & chiclets
I like us 
in this place 
our salt & reluctance 
push us 
into a spiritual state   
where I mark
my height on the
door frame
to the bathroom
convinced I tower
above the gargoyles 
we
practice
remembering 
on a
cold day
by the river
by removing
our wooly layers
leaving
us as bare as our
grandmothers were

---

Valérie Déus is a poet and the short film programmer for the Provincetown International Film Festival. Her work has been featured in Minnesota Women’s Press, The Brooklyn Rail, Midway, The St. Paul Almanac, The BeZine and most recently in A Garden of Black Joy Anthology and Under Purple Skies: A Minneapolis Anthology. When she's not writing, she is the host of Project 35, a local low-fi radio show featuring music and poetry on KRSM.