Postcard on Hooking Up in Appleton, Wisconsin
by Billy Greene
Once my bed
was bodybag, sarcophagus.
Somewhere I read
that men uncovered Sappho’s fragments
in mummy stuffing.
Men have glossed my sheets,
though their poetry
is cardboard: You want me real bad.
Not papyrus.
Dawns—hollowed, wordless—I wake
& doze & let my spit
spell stars across my pillowcase.
I seem to me
deceased, bittersweet. Though Sappho coined it
sweetbitter: sure, sweet while
he was here,
but how bitter his sweat tastes—
leaving right after.
Billy Greene is a poet, mover, and musician from Milwaukee,Wisconsin and Florida’s Gulf Coast. They recently graduated from Lawrence University summa cum laude for their manuscript Return Address: Poems, which was awarded the Hicks Prize in Poetry and the Diderrich Prize in Creative Writing. Their interdisciplinary practice has been supported by Sundress Academy for the Arts, Residency on the Farm, and an Embodied Collaborative Practice Fellowship. Now based in the Fox Valley, they work at a museum. Keep in touch with their antics—@billygreeeene on Instagram.
