Poetry by Sherry Abaldo

Matthias Ripp CC




I Sit in the Orgasmatron

and feel nothing

eyes, lips red with eczema,
right foot in a surgical boot

orgone accumulator Reich
called it

and all I can think of is how
he died in prison, psoriatic,

six tons of his work burned
where the Whitney is now

so many ashtrays at Orgonon
and this blue view

halfway between equator
and north pole

the parties they must have had
here, not nude beatnik sex 

orgies but European intellectuals
arousing local suspicion

except that one summer cloudbusters
saved the blueberry

harvest – how the orgasmatron is a
thin plywood box with sad bits 

of steel wool sticking out,
how Reich’s bust has flowing hair

how dangerous books and sex
are to governments

how close feeling nothing 
can be to feeling everything






Light so hot

the room is a lantern. Dusty blinds only
enablers. Sun outside posse of all the
world’s armies with high-powered flashlights
for eyes. Nuclear light. Day for night.
Light liquid. Light so hot the
moon is an afterthought. The room is a
moon. Bed steamy moor. Shower late
August rain, Furnace Creek. Oppenheimer’s
wet dream. When I run my tongue my 
teeth heat. Light so hot I perceive all your 
bones in a flash. Pyre light. Light so hot 
lantana flowers burn. Light in my mouth.
Memory ash. Skeletons melt. Lava roof.
Light so hot we puddle, we raisin, we swoon.






Fair Season

It was all I knew of Carnevale
the third week of each August –

Midway breath fried dough, Italian
sausage, cotton candy. Livestock

sheds beyond. How small the
town looked from the top bucket

of the Ferris wheel. How dark
along the edges. Blueberry-stained

tongues, each year a fresh queen.
When I was a child, a hoochie-

coochie tent in the back row
along the sludgy river. Sometimes

the girls came out on stage and
danced, in retrospect forlornly.

My mother told me not to look.
I looked. I thought their little

skirts and shadowed eyes looked
pretty. Wondered what magic went

on with them and the staggered line 
of local men behind the tattered curtain.


​

Sherry Abaldo’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, Rattle, ONE ART, and elsewhere and has been nominated for Best of the Net. She works as a researcher, including on the 2026 nonfiction WWII book The Dangerous Shore (William Morrow). She holds degrees from Wellesley College and USC film school. Born and raised in rural Maine, she currently lives with her husband Mario in Las Vegas, Nevada. More at https://sherryabaldo.com.




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