Three Poems by Tiffany Troy

Tiffany Troy is the author of Dominus (BlazeVOX [books]). She is Managing Editor at Tupelo Quarterly, Associate Editor of Tupelo Press, Book Review Co-Editor at The Los Angeles Review, Assistant Poetry Editor at Asymptote, and Co-Editor of Matter. She holds a BA and MFA from Columbia University and a JD from Fordham University School of Law.

Manifest Sign Here

In the years after Master said he could not bring himself to buy the overpriced 3M brand name Post Its, he proceeded to color code each state–admitted, pending admission–on a laminated map of the Continental United States of America with new neon stickies he bought from the dollar store–which all New Yorkers know ain’t ever just a dollar. The stickies looked benign enough, except I knew behind each decade-old “Sign Here” Stickies is the weight of proving to the world that I was not the letdown he was constantly accused by others of being.

The Lagoon

The infinite release in taking three of you green darlings

mean the hives all over my body,

the smell of bacteria interacting with air on top of dead skin,

can go away for a moment, and in that moment of no pain

I can replay again how I walked up that bridge next to Christina River,

up the stairs to the DuPont Environmental Education Center,

its wooden houses overwatching Nature.

And I was buoyed, walking briskly, thinking:

People must do things differently here!

Though I have no pretty words

to describe it, it has that vibe of the lengthy road to heaven:

the blue sky, the lush meadow with river from time to time,

flowers whose names are listed on the boards,

the weeds essential to the ecosystem: all good information to have

as I drummed up my courage to meet my death here

in the middle of nowhere with Dionne Brand in tow on my Tru RED iPhone,

after a full on breakfast of Hilton waffles before I discovered the whipped cream

and blueberries the next day, together with a bag of Lay's and Oreo's.

I smiled and snapped a picture of this meadow I'm heading into,

not of my childhood but of my present, of how calm I was,

heading into this air conditioned conference center,

until at the end of the Google map

the endpoint was a lake.

All my life I have chosen

this path

of least resistance,

and as I approach my 28th year,

I have desensitized

myself to all the ding-ding-dings,

much as I get my usual Sourdough Breakfast Sandwich,

pledging allegiance to the taste of this beautiful country

that often led me to face palm at the lagoon it led me to,

under the morning sun,

in lieu of a Convention Center.

I was too tired to panic, to be honest,

though I immediately turned back

calculating the time I need to retrace my steps,

but even then, underneath the fatigue

of my sweat-covered hands,

I recognized its blue,

absolutely gleaming, contained,

like after it's been reset

by Decadron my

silk-smooth skin.

Goldfish Orbs

Let me smile at the twin goldfish-orange orbs of light in the pink shaded clouds in early summer, or perhaps at the ebony black Flushing street covered with gum and wastewater, clean at last from the heavy rain. Let me witness the open umbrellas of jaywalking pedestrians, hand trucks carrying boxes of fruits or meats, and sloshing buckets of live fish lashed with emerald. Let them not be precautionary tales of immigrant bravado, as I walk past the wayward women lining up the streets and the cops on their phones. Let me look at the sky as the night falls again, and in this endless night of darkness, let the light in, I whisper. Let me witness this beauty of a sky I cannot reach and feel in my rotund stomach not emptiness or extreme anxiety. Instead, let this light continue to surround me inside as he rushes towards me and opens the door, as I flinch, backed to the wall. Let the feeling that has welled up in me be gone like the torrential rain that ends in a double-dipped rainbow. Let me not be too tired to begrudge the sun of its splendor on sunny days. Under the lamp lights of what I still remember of Flushing at night, let me wipe away my tired tears and remember the golden sunny side up egg in the sausage McMuffin he gets me each weekday, lest I mistake him for a pestilence instead of as my light.