Selected Poems by Caitlyn Woodall
“movie date”
viola davis is looking at us through the screen
and she’s laid up with this white man
and mine leans over and tells me
that could be us one day
but i’m tired of hearing him breathe
so i shake up the ice in my coke
and go to the bathroom just to sit
in a stall and think about all the things
i’d rather be doing on a saturday night
and when i come back thank god
finally viola’s got snot pouring out her nose
while she tells some trifling heifer off
her voice is stabbing at us through the screen
spit flying out her mouth
she says to that white lady
she can keep that no-good
dirtylyingcheating
sonofabitch white man
and i hear someone yell
mmhm I know that’s right!
viola finds herself a nice black boyfriend
credits roll
everybody claps
And on the way home I don’t tell him how I hate hearing him mouth-breathe. I nod when he says the movie just didn’t do it for him. I let him kiss me. I don’t tell him that he’s still greasy from the popcorn. I let him pick me up the next day. I ask him to keep picking me up. I hug his pearl-wearing mother and smell her perfume. I let him pay the tab. I swipe his cards. I get a neck pillow in first class. I let him cheat, but just once. I have doors opened for me, seats pulled out for me. I lay in bed with him like the cower-down, master-pleasing bitch I am. I touch generational wealth. I wear a fat ring. I let him spit on me. I marry him and have his little beige babies and name them Sarah and Johnny and Emily and Timmy. I cry strong-black-woman tears. Everybody claps. It’s just one of those things.
“feed me grapes, show me you love me”
loves comes to me
in a bowl of fruit
cut up by my mother
pineapple and oranges
stickying up her good
granite counters
souring her fingers
halved strawberries
that could just have
easily been left whole
a mango stripped
and then sliced
carefully around
a stubborn core
and she leaves this
for a worn and blanketed me
that has not left the bed
all day but to piss
and turn on the fan
me who can’t even
say thank you between
snotty sobs that come
and go at the thought
of getting out of that bed
to do something as small
as turning off that fan
love comes to me
in a pomegranate
beautifully deflowered
by a man who wants nothing
but to feed me each seed
to kiss the purple juice
that bleeds out of the corner
of my frowning mouth
to wash my stained fingers
for me while i droop
my arms and hang
my hands under
a running sink when
it is too much for me
to soap and dry myself
love comes to me
in a paper bag full
of gleaming lemons
unpacked by grandma’s
drooping brown arms
and then squeezed
into a plastic pitcher
poured into a plastic cup
zinging and sour enough
to put holes in my mouth
and it hurts in a good way
i suckle on a lemon peel
spit out seeds on dead grass
i drink and my grandma
kisses my brown forehead
because she knows i need
the little sting in my cup
to be strong enough
to give me that feeling
to give me a feeling
Caitlyn Woodall
10/25//2020
My name is Caitlyn Woodall and I’m a fourth year English major at UC Davis. I wrote the piece “movie date” shortly after reading Morgan Parker’s poem, “Matt,” which led me to think about not only my own experiences with interracial dating, but also the shared feelings that many women face when having to unfairly sacrifice their happiness, their comfort, their identity, etcetera for the sake of maintaining a relationship. I then ended up writing “feed me grapes, show me you love me” in late March, not long after the start of the pandemic, so this piece was born in a time of uncertainty and despondency, and those same feelings were inevitably breathed into this poem. Though these poems seem to come from two different worlds, they are both very much a part of me.
Cover photo by Margarita Zueva
