A native of the once-booming aluminum town of New Kensington, PA—just north of Pittsburgh—Meghan Tutolo spends her days juggling life and art. She writes and edits for the marketing department of an Italian foods company, teaches English Composition at a local college, and paints ferociously. When she isn’t doing any of the above, she can be found playing the ukulele in her kitchen, “thinking too much” or “asking too many questions.” Her poems have appeared in The Oklahoma Review, Arsenic Lobster, and Chiron Review—but also some obscure literary journals, local newspapers, paper placemats and old receipts.
BECOMING LESS
i.
Black & open [ like apocalypse ]
the night came for me, a sure
mouth, forecast in trumpets.
Golden-eyed Venus emerges
bags packed heavy & ready,
the moment her wet feet touched
Earth.
First, I find her secrets—
the warm & familiar rise of her chest,
blood-orbit of center skin, a sonnet
written in swelled ink along
the dark mirror of her spine. I’m tracing
in-love, with one small finger.
ii.
She is history already,
a whisper leaning in through
my window, so I tread
the watery lengths of her light—
sleepless & walking the walls. I am
prism carved of her far-star mirage.
She can only be present.
In my crooked shadow, I pace
the myth of her body—
all god & alien. She irons me against
the broad ache of this room—
fragmented & filling up.
iii.
In her wake, we will align—
[ again, the trumpets ] reprise or repeat
what she keeps fevered with forever.
I don’t know how to hold her lightly,
sun-faced as any foreign fire
come before her—
I must bury or surrender.
BECOMING LESS
i.
Black & open [ like apocalypse ]
the night came for me, a sure
mouth, forecast in trumpets.
Golden-eyed Venus emerges
bags packed heavy & ready,
the moment her wet feet touched
Earth.
First, I find her secrets—
the warm & familiar rise of her chest,
blood-orbit of center skin, a sonnet
written in swelled ink along
the dark mirror of her spine. I’m tracing
in-love, with one small finger.
ii.
She is history already,
a whisper leaning in through
my window, so I tread
the watery lengths of her light—
sleepless & walking the walls. I am
prism carved of her far-star mirage.
She can only be present.
In my crooked shadow, I pace
the myth of her body—
all god & alien. She irons me against
the broad ache of this room—
fragmented & filling up.
iii.
In her wake, we will align—
[ again, the trumpets ] reprise or repeat
what she keeps fevered with forever.
I don’t know how to hold her lightly,
sun-faced as any foreign fire
come before her—
I must bury or surrender.