Sophia Dahlin 

Gods Peed
I take a lot of pleasure in this moment

I am in bed eating macaroni
[     ] is on her way to the show
she is working the bar

and it's a vale of tears outdoors
gods peed I said to her
she caught the pause

gods’ pee and tears available to us
tonight
we grieve and feel relief

I loved having her come over
a surprise
loved fucking her in the rain sound
while the cars move past it
and the youtube wails

She and I crack up
but I touch her face
grieve as I roll my hand across her

lesbians love to fuck sadly
straights love it grimly
like they were farming

maybe what I find tragic is that she is young
and so beautiful

I will follow her to the show at 11:39 pm
I will be a little in her way
as she opens beers

all of this sounds so beyond the grave to me
that's what it is

I am feeling the loss of this beautiful night
drying up in the sun

my mac and cheese losing its heat
the soft rain drying


Brooke Offers the Doll of Herself
Brooke who looks like a dahlia
brought me a bouquet of dahlias
so now I can see how she looks
with her white-green wisps of hair
a dahlia is not separate from its stem
not from the green process of forming
a plant that does not fully ripen
the dahlia smells sweet and green
its head heavy like Brooke's head is
round skulled and little nosed
and pink in the petal's vulvar folds
each dahlia a full
blown garden in the wind
or a swell of roomies in Oakland
liberating land from the lords
Brooke is tall and long stemmed
and in that she is just a dahlia
who would bring me herself

She budgets for wild caught fish and berries
like a bear would if it were a dahlia
and I love her very much today
if I had a vase that was clear enough
I'd place in it some leavings of my love

Sophia Dahlin is a poet in Berkeley, where she leads generative poetry workshops, teaches youth creative writing, and, with seven other poets, curates a weekly reading series at Tamarack, Oakland. These poems are from Glove Money, her second full length collection; her first, Natch, came out in 2020 from City Lights Books.