Poem After Willie Perdomo

by Chloé Allyn

poem for mathuson, kiko,                                                                                                 and then for Bryce

“go have sex and be normal!”                                                                                 mathuson rebukes, like duking;                                                                                       years ago
he puts my hand into his, running                                                                                         us away from them, a love that asks                                                                                   “is this a first date?” when really                                                                                      you wanted kinship, to huddle next                                                                                   to a body in the dark                                                                                                           not quite like lovers, not quite unlike                                                                                 the tit suckling, the bread line,
the buffet line to gather
a handful of berries off the bush                                                                                       that grows old
under other, all the food symbiotic                                                                               medicine in a cabinet of grass
all the weed rolled up tightly in
the pink papers you know I like
and I love you when you tell me
“I always wanted a stoner girlfriend,”                                                                                   I always wanted a soulmate, I was just                                                                             too nervous to admit it, whence there                                                                       formed a pearl of desire and there                                                                               you’ve placed your heart.

Chloé Allyn is a midwestern love poet and artist. Her work has been featured in WUSSY Mag, Five South, and exhibited at 5 Points Art Gallery, the Rahr West Art Museum, as well as the Trout Museum of Art. She runs the creative enterprise Crutch of Memory with her friends in Appleton, Wisconsin. Allyn is part of the 2022-2023 cohort of Native American Authors through All My Relations Arts and the Native American Community Development Institute; most recently, she received the 2023 Idyllwild Arts Writers Week poetry fellowship.