Poetry by Jasmine Ledesma

                ​Richard P J Lambert CC



Winter, 2009 

It’s really unbelievable. 
Ten years of working this shift and now 
I am an involuntary cheerleader. 
Stuck in a pleated skirt, the ripe fabric 
swiping at my legs. My hair foams at my shoulders. 
My mother and I are in the crook of Dallas. 
The air is salted with hauntings. We are
in a waiting room that smells of dust. 
A choked up water fountain and a 
Dr. Phil rerun make music nobody 
could even twitch to.  
A real doctor appears in the doorway 
with an emergency sporting a buzz cut. My sister.
We walk down a hallway filled with signs. 
Ward is a pretty word. We sit down on a plastic couch. 
My sister’s head looks like a peach I’d steal. 
There are fuzzy bandages around both of her wrists. 
She is twenty years old. 
You look so cute, she says and says. 
I never ask what hurts. 
It is enough to know that it does.

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​
Ode To Vomit

My mother is afraid 
of fat and break-ins. 
She thinks they are 
the same thing. 
I am ten and scared
of fire and vampires
in that order. 
My reflection greases
along car windows like
smears of blood. 
I steal my brother’s mirror
and spend decades
looking at the girl in there. 
She looks like a cloud, 
moody and formed. 
The first time I make myself
throw up my room is grey
with afternoon. My head
full of unfinished dopamine, 
I chase my first impulse and
crawl into my throat. 
Everything comes up like surprise.

​

Jasmine Ledesma can be found eating diamonds in New York. Her work has been published over twenty times in places such as Vagabond City and Gravitas.

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