Poetry By Alyssa Canepa

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​we are tourists
we use the map we created

We hated packing the boat and we hated unloading camp. But we loved to play alongside the lake’s rim, seeing the land curve around and scoop out a little corner of Yellowstone… just for us. We shared that bay—boat beached—with the moose, our nights with the howls of wolves, and our ears with the Earth’s floor, listening to the geysers bubble and hum from deep underneath as we drifted off to sleep. I remember we swam in the cold water in Rugrats underwear and red galoshes, even when we learned about hypothermia from posters with pictures of a drowned man. And we knew the water was for fishing, not swimming. And we did it anyway. The stars met our eyes through a ring of treetops, and we never stopped looking up, while we told those jokes from so many colorful candy wrappers. 

We remember these moments as some of the best from our childhood. We like to remember these times so we can forget the others. We tell the same jokes from the same candy wrappers because they can protect us from what we know, what we share. But when we were in the woods, just the bugs and smell of pine were between us, and we always want that back. We dissociate into the wilderness and from each other and pretend this brings us closer and what we really want is to be as close as six cousins and two grandparents tucked away into one tent as the forest hums or howls us into sleep and sweet dreams.

What we share are secrets and love and pain. Funerals and fights… and secrets again. We pretend we don’t know he hit her or she’s high again and who’s not at holiday and why. We pretend we don’t know what happened to me because we couldn’t stop it—can’t fix it. It’s softer this way on the surface and we are together in our division—our walls and locked-away-ness. It’s unspoken, the work we do, because we learn it from you. And we are surprised when it should come from us, too.

We are resilient and strong, enablers but lovers. So deeply we love. We don’t tell each other what we already know because we think we don’t have to, like clockwork, old faithfuls, gurgling underground. Like singing to the water, standing on the banks of Flat Mountain Arm with only the waves applauding us, clapping up onto the rocks. Like the doe passing us every year, all grace with her claw-marked ribs—thick, thick scars—drawn into her fur, her flesh, so deep they must be. “Look,” we say. “She’s here. Isn’t she beautiful?” 





FIRST

Like the first time she shaved her legs
against her mothers wishes.

In the passenger seat of a suburban, small foot on the dashboard

he bought some shaving cream and a razor
let her pass blades over prepubescent skin 
light, blonde leg hairs while he watched. 

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later, in the garage–just her and the gas can

Walkman forever glued to her ears

aural distortion like so many popping fireflies dancing around her head as the fumes cut off oxygen to her brain and the high cut off all suffering

she felt alive, a part of, inside of something. Ensnared in the bowels of the house

the mouse shit and insects and gasoline, they were there and they loved when she’d come and she’d breathe in and contort her body to follow the euphoria as it passed through her nostrils, brain, blood vessels–seeping out of her pores. 

a secret little love and mine to command. 

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First time 
on the floor
Shitsmearcolorcarpet

Cotton panties, barney sheets

Orgasm before alphabet
Before i know my name

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Alyssa Canepa is a writer.
Professionally, creatively, sporadically, and compulsively. 
She believes in art, compassion, and being of service. 

Alyssa is a low-residency MFA candidate in the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. She currently lives in Savannah, Georgia with two greybulls and her generous, kind, and loving partner Toby.
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