My English Victorian Dating Troubles

I am bad with men

because I am deeply holy: they see

right through me, they know

I wish to please.

They say I have a petticoat of needs.

Let's rustle up some pillow feathers.

Let's see what they look like

laid out on the beach like

striped seagulls

after scraps

of my native tongue.

Out here, where the sand is so white,

so Westernized, how could I not

sink into it

& burn with questions

like what am I doing here

I am in the wrong book

I am in the wrong era

I am not Dorothea

I am Analicia

Why does the twenty-first century feel like this?

Like men are talking into

their favorite phonograph

& the phonograph is me

receiving their baritone: You're so exotic

Watch out, men, says my violin

I am a Royal Bengal man-eating tiger

I will devour your pith helmets

as well as these enchiladas

piled high with American mozzarella any time of day

See, there is a white man

in every single one of us.

Yes, everyone is wearing casual yacht wear now

& mispronouncing their specialty condiments

O gentlemen

I am the angel/whore of kale chips

I like to purchase as I please

I am completely in character

So I will accept your pearls

though I may cut them off with my teeth

& watch them slip down to the sea

into the kind woman

you've invented

for your own troubled purposes.







Poem reprinted from Virgin by Analicia Sotelo (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2018). Copyright © 2018 by Analicia Sotelo. Reprinted with permission from Milkweed Editions, milkweed.org.