Gion Davis is a poet from northern New Mexico where she grew up on a sheep ranch. Her poetry has been featured in Bad Nudes Magazine and she has received the 2018 Best New Poets Prize selected by Ocean Vuong. She is the co-founder and co-host of Dead Bird Reading Series and she currently lives in Northampton, MA, where she is seeking her MFA in Poetry at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Gion can be found on Instagram @starkstateofmind.
This poem was shortlisted for the 2018 Peach Gold in Poetry with guest judge Morgan Parker.
1 poem
by Gion Davis
Whatever’s left
The guy I’m seeing
is telling me
how cute
my cunt is,
like, compared
to other cunts
he’s seen mine
is the cutest and
I have no idea
what that means
lurching up out
of a skylight
onto a slanted roof,
careening into some
stranger’s balcony,
kicking over their
potted plants like
a bad cat in the dark,
laughing. Still drunk
at 7am I get
outside I run
until I throw up
in someone’s yard
full of plastic
furniture. I run home.
It’s summer.
I stalk my fuck
buddy to a party
and tell everyone
what a coincidence
it is we’re both
there. Some people
I don’t know
telling us all
to take our shirts
off because it’s
a pool party. Where’s
the pool? There isn’t one
it’s a pool party. Okay.
Fuck buddy does coke
off a paper plate
with a white woman
in a head wrap.
He pretends not
to see me. I sit on a huge
inflatable unicorn
pool toy and cry.
The morning after
I was assaulted
in high school,
I caught my boyfriend’s
hangover vomit
in a bowl. I cleaned
his parents’ condo
in the ski valley
we were staying at
that weekend. One
of his friends had barfed
under a coat rack
on the sand colored
carpet. Before
he fucked me, he
whacked me
across the face. I
bled all over the bed.
I’d been embarrassed
about being on my period.
They cared about my
black eye. Later,
he said it was an
accident. It was winter.
We all woke up naked.
I threw away every beer
bottle, washed the sheets,
the dishes, the boyfriend.
I told my dad I’d fallen
on a jump in the
terrain park. That much
was true. I tried
to tell my friend Anna
what really happened
but her dad was dying
and she said
I can’t believe
you didn’t invite me,
you just wanted
to be the only girl there.
I guess that was true too.
Smoking on a bar patio
I tell the guy I’m sleeping
with about high school
and he says you still drink,
does that mean
you’ve moved on?