Poetry By Joyce Safdiah

Billie Grace Ward CC




midtown prophet

i used to walk past the psychic every day
but i didn’t have seventy five dollars
to find out if we were fated
i took a cereal box decoder
     to your text messages
only garbled things further
          when i finally went to the psychic
past the sandwich board sign
   with it’s crystal ball 
up the narrow rickety staircase on twenty third street
through the velvet curtain shrouded in dust
         she asked me “so, who is he?”
i left                                 she didn’t have a clue 





ephemera 

you can measure a life in the throwaway
           snatches of paper used as bookmark
the airline ticket
                    in the copy of reviving ophelia
a concerned mother reading on a business trip
         after her daughter came home reeking of cloves
                        an unexplained bruise             arms turning matchstick
faded blue receipt from the piccadilly hotel bar
                                      tucked into sappho was a right on woman
a sloe gin fizz 
a lovers embrace                          in a room with two twin beds
                              family christmas photo in a dog eared paperback
lesbian love stories
                      aqua net women whisper through the slick photo
      “honey, still living with your roommate?” 
polyamour valentine       in a guide to fucking
       of course, it’s at housing works
finding a dedication to growing old and loving it.
love letters, grocery lists, receipts
unused coupons, suicide notes, gum wrappers
                 end up donating your social security card
to the salvation army. you wanted a new identity anyways


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Joyce Safdiah is a poet and undergraduate student at Purchase College. Her work is influenced by mundane minutiae, and can be found in the notes app, love letters to friends and scrawled in bathroom stalls.
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