I drove all this way,
but all I want to do is drive
away again.
All the words in Scrabble
are as inadequate.
Still, I keep score–
15 years to go
1 minor text message sent
— because
tally marks
our progress.
Walls, floors, ceilings, folding tables and chairs,
guards and vending machines:
it all smells like bleach,
and bleach does not
smell clean.
I’m working on a theory about clean,
about a lot of work.
Now that I have nails I stopped biting,
I’ve struggled at keeping them clean.
These are the kinds of things I notice when unsettled,
unclean, and playing a game I don’t want to play.
Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela’s writing has been recognized by The Leeway Foundation, Hedgebrook and others, and, among other places, has been published in Make/shift, As Us Journal, The Rust Belt Rising, APIARY, Aster(ix) and Big Bell. She is the founder of Thread Makes Blanket press, which recently released Dismantle, an anthology of writing from VONA writers, for which she also served as an editor. As part of her teaching at the Community College of Philadelphia, she instructs for-credit classes inside Philadelphia jails. “Pretend Nice, But Terrible” is a poem is about visiting a friend of hers in Kansas who is serving a 17 and 1/2 year sentence for a text message to a minor.
