Featured Artist: Carla Sofia

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Carla Sofia / @carlapipiabr / an old Dominican soul who loves photography, journaling, gardening, tattooing, writing and basically all forms of self expression. She writes poetry to feel and be felt because ultimately that is what we’re all looking for. You can find what she’s up to on her Instagram account @carlasofia___

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FOREIGNER’S TONGUE

I steal phrases from the people I love
my vocabulary is a knitted rug
with patches from my grandmother’s zebra sheets and old stains from a few drunken nights.
my words are stolen letters from acquaintances, strangers and forgotten lovers,
I am a foreigner to my own tongue;
I steal phrases like I trade hugs,
I hear the words connected melodically
and I lure them to my mouth,
I keep them in a secret room
I have made just for them–– accommodated a whole space
for these refugee words.
I steal phrases from the people I long
so if you ever hear words
stolen from you,
know they are being loved
in this foreigner’s tongue.

DISCO BALLS

when I leave this earth
and my soul wanders
I want it to meet
the ever-present cluster of stars
out in the cosmos
I want it to dance with her DNA
with the dust that made her,
collided with her,
and brought her home.
I want her to glitter
like disco balls
around the galaxies she held between her iris I want my soul to come home
back into space,
back into what created
who she was–
that translucent halo
that burst her into reality
that galactic
luminosity
that made
her
who she was.
I want this journey
on earth
to be
her coming back
her welcoming
into the celestial;
into her tangible fantasy.

WAVES

I heard the waves whispering
to each other
love letters across oceans
of self proclaimed tranquility.
I saw the purple undertones
of the horizon
smiling back at me,
the rustling of the sand in my hair demanding attention.
I felt the wind
caressing my body;
I was lost
and unlost
over and over again.

RED

the disgust on your face
as I reached under my skirt
and was pulled out of my body.

as I sat there for the minutes to come
you quickly turned,
as if to physically say you had left me to ‘fix’ my issues,
and signaled to the bathroom
while I still sat there
unable to move
because
I simply didn’t know why my biology
had hurt your masculinity so badly,
how fragile must it have been?

I questioned that later
but in the moment all I could do
was walk over to the bathroom
look at myself in the mirror and clench my jaw tightly.

I didn’t cry
instead I was filled with anger
and frustration
at how you had reacted to a little red stain.

BATTLEFIELDS

there was a never-ending
forging oath
between my mother
and my father
the way they painted their own truths
as if words had rights and wrongs
as if their tongues could speak different tones;
me
a daughter
torn between
uncertainty
a broken Spanish
of half truths
and manipulation
as if every story ever told
was a way of making me gullible enough
was a way of making me a little more askew
in a never ending game of tug of war
that, at the very start,
was love.

so tell me,
how can all of this stem from love?
how can they tear me apart
limb by limb
finger by finger?
stick their flags in my soil
and claim territory in my heart
a battlefield open for them to massacre each other
and proclaim it as love?

and how can I love each one separately,
understand them,
protect them,
despite not being whole?

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