Poetry By Tiffany Promise

James Loesch CC




Losing Streak 

Took a Greyhound 
to Albany to lose
my virginity 
some creep 
selling t-shirts 
out of a trash bag 
tried to get me 
to jack him off,
sweetened the pot 
with the promise 
of handi-wipes.

I declined 
politely, feigned 
sleep ’til we got to 
the station, hid 
in the bathroom 
’til God_of_Jell0 
swooped in to save
the mistletoe 
in his top hat 
both a signifier 
and a curse.

///

A few hours later:  in his parent’s shower:  a pink streak on the wall.

///





Brother

Before you became you, every
man I fell in love with was you.

Veins full of horse, ectoplasm 
and dust: a litany of them

with see-through skin,
hands that couldn’t quite quit 

the twitch. First there was Jeremy--
cigarette smoke in his hair.

Skateboards and eyeshadow,
we were still young. Pre-junk.

Maybe some acid, a bunch of weed,
Mountain Dew, no big deal.

Then there was Johnny,
the whole hit-&-run of him.

Miles marked by bruises and past
Easter’s chocolate Jesuses.

Lastly, Clayton, with his cool Texas twang, 
now just a tombstone on Google.

I’m left here sifting through vials 
of ashes and alphabet crib sheets, 

poems written on Denny’s napkins,
safety-pinned T-shirts, baggies full of hair.

I’ve got milk teeth, mix tapes, petrified 
umbilical stumps. All that water-

logged Henry Miller bullshit. 
Your scratched-up Pennywise CDs.

I feel too young to have lost so many lovers,
                                                                    a Brother,

but the rings around my eyes remind:
It was almost thirty years ago that we

moved into the house of the hungry 
ghost. I grew that turtle shell, those fish 

gills, tried to summon an extra set 
of toes. I prayed for us; I really did. 

My knucks have the tiny moon-shaped 
scars to prove. When that didn’t work, 

I cracked open the cask and pickled 
my liver like a proper pig’s foot, too. 

A multitude of sins, Gran-Gran 
would’ve said, sipping a high-ball 

herself. The beasts in the backs of our 
cabinets have funny names: Zit Cream, 

Poppycock, Cohosh, Codeine, Step on
a Crack Break our Mother’s Back. Thicker

than water—more like syrup—time inches on, 
Jon-Jon. Out of your ending, we begin

                                                                                again.





​Tiffany Promise received an MFA from CalArts, where she completed a novel-length manuscript filled with creepily beautiful poetic fiction. Her undergraduate life was situated in New York City at Sarah Lawrence College and Eugene Lang College, where she immersed herself in women’s studies, literature, and slam poetry. After obtaining her MA from CIIS in Counseling Psychology, she has been working for the last few years in San Francisco as a psychotherapy intern--she uses her literary and arts background to inform her therapeutic work, focusing on metaphor, imagery, and the archetypes that link our internal experiences to a vast collectivity. She also uses her deep understanding of psychological processes and subconscious wanderings to inform her creative writing.

Tiffany has performed her poetry and fiction all over the United States, from REDCAT in Los Angeles, to back-rooms of dingy, indie coffee shops in Jersey City. She loves reading her work (whether it is poetry or fiction) and is looking to do more of that in Los Angeles. 
Tiffany's sensibilities are greatly influenced by  feminism, punk rock, trips to Disneyland, and the phases of the moon.