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    SINK
    SINK
    SINK
    Ebook97 pages55 minutes

    SINK

    By Desireé Dallagiacomo

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Desireé Dallagiacomo's debut book grapples with the intersections of family and mental health. Sink asks and answers hard questions about grief, lineage, death and all manner of inheritance. What is one left with when they come from a family that has nothing to its name but loss? Throughout, Dallagiacomo weighs the cost of what it is to be alive and a woman in a landscape that makes being alive and a woman uninviting. Sink approaches grief and depression not as a tourist, but instead with the power and nuance of someone who has survived and made the most of their survival.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherButton Poetry
    Release dateMar 12, 2019
    ISBN9781943735518
    SINK

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    • 5/5
      I became intrigued after watching a short video my daughter sent me… I subscribed, downloaded the ebook and immediately began to read it. I did not stop, other than to take a shuddering breath, wipe the tears streaming down my cheeks…until I had finished the entire book. I will be sending the link to several people who will be as deeply moved as I. “I forgive you,” had me sobbing at the end. AMAZING!

    Book preview

    SINK - Desireé Dallagiacomo

    A Note on Poetry E-Books

    You are reading a poetry e-book, which, based on the settings of your device, can result in significant changes to the original formatting as intended by the author and publisher. For the best experience reading this book, please set your device so that the following line fits entirely on one line on your screen.

    Can you believe that you, too, are someone’s altar? You are someone’s

    SINK

    SINK

    poems by

    Desireé Dallagiacomo

    © 2019 by Desireé Dallagiacomo

    —

    Published by Button Poetry / Exploding Pinecone Press

    Minneapolis, MN 55403 | http://www.buttonpoetry.com

    —

    All Rights Reserved

    Manufactured in the United States of America

    Cover design: Nikki Clark

    ISBN 978-1-943735-49-5

    Ebook ISBN 978-1-943735-51-8

    Contents

    My First Altar

    When giving birth

    For My Mother

    Reno, Nevada

    Medford, Oregon

    Señor Frogs

    Strength

    Single Mothers Can Yell Wherever They Want

    B on Elm Street Behind the Fairgrounds, 1999

    Broken Sonnet for the Closeness of Grooming

    10 Candles

    Aunt Diana Opens the Trunk of Her Pathfinder and She Cannot Stop Crying as All the Presents for the Homeless Kids Fall Out

    The Gutter

    Girlhood (noun)

    With Vigor

    Pine Street, Taser

    The Small, Breakable Nature of Gods

    Child Protective Services Takes B and All His Siblings on a Tuesday Afternoon

    Knots

    Origin Story

    Everything to Call Him Before Rapist

    Be Mine

    In State Prison, No One Keeps Their Underwires

    Pleasant Valley State Prison with Inmate Number F-49837

    A Bluejay Flies into the Mental Hospital

    Sink

    Grief Vignettes for Aunt Diana

    Written 5 Years after Your Body Was Found

    13 Ways of Looking at a Rapist

    Thighs Say

    Salties

    It Took My Mother 3 Days to Give Birth to Me

    Nine

    Joliet Street

    One Side of an Ongoing Dialogue with Sharon, My Therapist

    I tell you my heart is like an avocado seed

    The Funny Wind of the Heart Is Not a Reliable Weathervane

    The Autumn I Found Out You Were Dead

    Jemez Springs, New Mexico

    I Break Like a Fever

    The Best Way I Can Tell You about the Resiliency of Tenderness Is with a Portrait of the Pitbull I Share My Bed With

    Talk // Talk // Talk

    Where Did You Get that Pick-Up Line? You Should Drop It Back Off

    Sum of Her Parts

    A Man Says to a Woman I Love, If I Caught You in Bed with Someone Else, I’d Shoot You Both

    For Keepsies with B

    Your Doctor Says Dementia

    At Last

    Grief Vignettes for Kaiya

    Of All the Muscles

    A Series of Portraits More Intimate Than Sex

    You Became in a Town No One Has Ever Heard Of

    Ode to My Strap-On Dildo and Ode for My Love on His Hands and Knees in Front of Me

    All the Plus-Size Models in the Magazines Are Actually Regular Size

    I Forgive You

    I was a late bloomer.

    But anyone who blooms at all, ever, is very lucky.

    —Sharon Olds

    SINK

    My First Altar

    Altar (noun): a place on which sacrifices are offered in worship, or something sacrificed at the cost of something else.

    My first altar was my father’s hands—no.

    My first altar was my mother’s body, a secret hideout in a woman’s skin.

    My first altar was my sister’s fingers, folding tresses of hair until they were braids down my neck.

    My first altar was a place with no name but a slow pulse I followed into brightness.

    My first altar was a soft forgiveness.

    My first altar was a story I made for myself. Where I call myself girl from many. I call myself daughter of the hunt, here only because a woman before me survived. A woman was never unmade and so she grew me.

    My first altar was my body and then that of a starlit boy.

    My first altar was the red bloom in my underwear, hid from the laundry and so it stayed a plume—evidence of growing.

    My first altar was a cordless phone, whispered into under the covers late on a school night.

    My first altar

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