Gone West

I pour coffee into the green and pink California
mug. I see La Jolla—the mauve lace dress I wore

to Christian’s wedding with the tight ivory heels. 
I stand in a lush courtyard eating scallop hors d’oeuvres

and chewing on a toothpick. I don’t talk to anyone.
I’m meditating—on why sunshine makes me angry 

and how I’m sick with jealousy for every life I can’t be living. 
Last night Mark said why aren’t you acknowledging my emotions, 

just touch me. I said fuck you, banged some knives 
around the sink and shook the greasy wash water 

off my fingertips. I can’t wait to write this poem
about leaving you for a sunset—riding straight

into it and burning up.  I’m addicted to feeling solid and fed 
on clean rage and cleaner porcelain. I remember driving down 

Highway One—the Pacific horizon a wide eye 
whispering open me up in little waves lapping. 

I’ll drink this coffee and shit twice before ten. 
I’ll think about what I should say in therapy 

and then drive home thinking add to the list of things 
I’ll never say. I read my 8th grade diary recently.

It disappoints me. I was shallow and cared too much 
about boys and MTV. But I keep it like I keep the plastic 

toy dragon that lived inside my Fisher Price castle. 
I hold it in my palms sometimes and wonder who I was 

when I cupped it with tiny hands. I’ve never had an easy
trip to the west coast. I’m always getting ideas, getting lost.

A Jeremiad Against Me 

If she’s not messaging me clips of dancing cats, my mother
sends reels about mothers and babies—did you know 

your baby’s DNA cells live in your bloodstream and brain
for years after pregnancy? A dreamy, madonna blue fabric 

flutters beneath the text—mother and child connected 
in the deepest of ways, always and forever. I have my doubts.

I search and find an article by the NIH titled: Feto-maternal
microchimerism: Memories from pregnancy. It’s real—

I’m not a scientist but I learn there is a presence of fetal cells
in maternal tissues up to twenty-seven years postpartum.

The cells are adventurous, having multi-lineage potential—
burrowing into the lung, skin, heart or liver. The wandering

specks of baby can be good, improving immunity and tissue
repair or bad—studies have reported a higher proportion 

of fetal cells in women with cancer (specifically colon cancer).
Up to four times higher chance. I didn’t want to give her anything

from my body—or to change her. When I was fifteen and sick
with an unspecific autoimmune disease my mother had the priest

anoint me at a weekday morning mass. The oil was slick
and she kept touching my forehead and rubbing some on her own hands.

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Rosanne English is a poet and musician living in the Hudson Valley. She holds an MFA in poetry from NYU and is working on her first collection. Her poems are forthcoming or appear in Maudlin House, Cordite Poetry Review, Nixes Mate Review, Narrative Magazine, and elsewhere. Her band Invisible Girl will release its debut EP in 2027.