Poetry By Sydni Trameri

        Wesley Carr CC




Sorrow Is Not My Name
after Ross Gay, after Gwendolyn Brooks
(and a little bit after Louise Glück)

Despite the ache of my young bones,
despite the seductive whispers

of another day’s three thousand souls,
the warmth of the lavender hot chocolate

radiating through the chipped mug
in my favorite coffee shop answers.

It says whatever it is that waits will wait.
Death adores a shrunken, brittle carcass.

Under a streetlight in the cold, a family of deer
is expecting me, my scent gifted to them by god.

Silly, to think the arrow of time moving too slow.
Nearly three decades have blinked by, and now,

to want it faster. To want it faster
while I have yet to say long ago.

While there is still anyone left
who loves me.




​
Till the Bleeding Stops

In a dream, B says, You just
want attention, and I reply, Yes.

In a disagreement with my beloved,
I hold a dagger behind my back

to contain the whimper. A knife
in the hand is worth everything

you hold dear if you need it.
As a child, I was told I couldn’t

just cry to get out of trouble.
But you’re not in trouble, he says.

I don’t say, I don’t know the difference
between love and staying. I don’t say,

Mama didn’t teach me the word unconditional,
only showed me how to drive through

a median when I miss my exit,
how to put my thumb in my mouth

till the bleeding stops.



​
Sydni Trameri is a queer poet living in Georgia with her grumpy old man dog, Mooshka. Her work is inspired by bugs, trauma, and an obsession with death she seems to have had ever since watching her grandma die. She likes ferns and most other things that are green.