Yesenia Montilla

Up on my Bougie Ass Shit

The brie cheese priced at $30/lb
The face cream that promises to drop 5 years
The yoga class that suspends you in mid air
The forearm tattoo with blackbirds
The septum ring with emeralds
The mattress that regulates your temperature
The Spanish ham made from happy pigs
The cashmere throw that doubles as a scarf
The bottle of wine for special occasions
let me bathe in it –
The body massage that uses hot stones
The infrared sauna that melts fat fast
The first class seat to Paris
to Dubai
to Capetown
to Seychelles
to Bali
to Maldives

Sometimes I be up on that bougie ass shit
A full moon is just another way for me to shift the tides
A sunny day a vault full of vitamin D

I want to get paid to do kegels with my yoni egg in a king
size bed after my vajacial while everyone watches –

I have big dreams for big
things

Some days I can’t stand myself I am so pretentious
Some days I fill my Anthropologie cart to the brim
& then delete
Some days I can taste the caviar on my tongue
I can feel the feathers in the bed
I can drag my lips across a gold bowl
full of manuka honey
& quiver from the extravagance of it all

Some days I say dinner at per se I deserve it

Some days I am made of glitter I explode –

Letting Go

During meditation this morning
Oprah tells me to dream it & let
go. Dream it & send it to the universe.

She doesn’t know that I hold on
to my dreams as if they were lovers

Hold on way past the expiration date
Way past the signifier for loosen
your grip; eons after the thing I loved
most is dead in my hands. I wanna say

to Oprah: What if the universe wants
to keep the things I want for itself?

The Chiffon dress mustard colored
dreaming. The hummingbird’s wings
buzzing as fast as my poet’s mind; its
bird face with its human eyelashes

flirting with all my wanting – Oprah,
what if the universe keeps my beach
house? My yogi body? My late nights
kissing Halle & Michael B equally?

What if I have dreamt so big that
the universe thinks I am too small for
such musings? My hands become

wine goblets pouring out rain water
pouring out desire like ten thousand
meteors flashing in the sky. There,

look there, somewhere between this
constellation & that, every poem I’ve
ever written, in the universe’s library
undiscovered & weeping in the dark –

Yesenia Montilla is an Afro-Latina poet & a daughter of immigrants. Her poetry has appeared in the chapbook For the Crowns of Your Head, as well as the literary journals The Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner, Pittsburgh Poetry Review & others. She received her MFA from Drew University in Poetry and Poetry in Translation & is a 2014 CantoMundo Fellow. Her first collection The Pink Box is published by Willow Books & was Longlisted for a PEN award in 2016. She lives in Harlem NY.