This selection, chosen by guest editor Sarah Clark, is from How to Monetize Despair by Lisa Mottolo (Unsolicited Press 2023).
American Summer
Summer is a tiring toy, a Barbie doll with one pretty outfit and no aspirations. My date gives me watermelon vodka, handing me the cup firmly like a mother pushes a thermometer into a sick child. It tastes of the pink underneath a flaked fingernail. The slick, green eyelids of the women in the streets are convincing me I’m bisexual, though I realize I’d quickly lose interest, because I’m the type to arrange a bouquet of flowers for you and resent you for taking them. I’m the type to drown in the bead of condensation on a leaf. My face is soaked in nervosity, a fleshy towel needing a wringing, and everyone is saying, “I’m here to party and I am worthy,” and I tell myself I want to be worthy of more important things, but really, it’s a defense mechanism. My date says, “you need to socialize,” and gives me more watermelon vodka. It’s a day for the sun to intensify the smell of urine at the base of a fire hydrant. It’s a day for mailing out our desires in black envelopes. We’d almost be having fun, if it weren’t for the incomprehensible stillness of our chests, our hearts drained like frightened squid.
Lisa Mottolo is a neurodivergent poet living in Austin, TX. She is the author of the poetry collection How to Monetize Despair (Unsolicited Press, 2023) and she is the Founding Editor at Lit Fox Books. Lisa has attended writing programs at UC Berkeley and Kenyon College, and her work has appeared in Penn Review, The Laurel Review, Diagram, Santa Clara Review, and others. You can find her doing typical poet things like admiring birds, romanticizing the dark, and being overstimulated at AWP.
Sarah Clark is a mad crip genderfuck two-spirit enrolled Nanticoke editor, writer, and cultural consultant. They are Editor-in-Chief and Poetry Editor at ANMLY, Editor-in-Chief at ALOCASIA: a journal of queer plant-based writing, and Editor-in-Chief at beestung. They are an editor on the Bettering American Poetry series, and a current Board member and Assistant Editor at Sundress Publications. They have edited folios for publications including the GLITTERBRAIN folio and a folio on Indigenous & Decolonial Futures & Futurisms at ANMLY. Sarah freelances, and has worked with a number of literary and arts publications and organizations, including the Best of the Net anthology, contemptorary, Curious Specimens, #PoetsResist at Glass Poetry, Apogee Journal, Blackbird, the Paris Review, and elsewhere.
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