Co-Mission Contributor: Sadie Dupuis

July 20, 2020

(Photo by Natalie Piserchio)

With all my tours and readings canceled for the foreseeable future, I’m sleeping in my own bed (or at least anxiously lying awake in it) for more consecutive nights than ever in my life. A more regular home base has made it less daunting to take on new projects this spring. One such project is Wax Nine Journal, a poetry weekly housed by the record label I run. Touring my book through 2018 and 2019 and meeting other poets, I was somewhat astonished to hear how few opportunities there are for us to make income through readings and even through their publishers – it’s harder than music, somehow! Almost all the writers I know rely on other forms of work that cannot happen with social distancing. Wax Nine pays small stipends to everyone we publish, almost all of which are funded by donations. The best way to support me right now is to help me support writers by making a donation (or reading and sharing the journal, or submitting some of your work!)

MY PRETTY POET

I chew up my feet
Running down a mountain times five
When I buy the green gem
I’m envied by thousands
When I look into the makeup monitor
My eyes the color of American money
Bleach-sanitized

There are two rescue seals
And I squat naked in front of a curtain
Legs spread like a man at work
At work against the demons in my molar
Which pummel each other all through the nights
Waiting to pop out my skull
Surprise
You were bad all along
The only pretty thing in this evil world
Is the ghastly bitch

Support Sadie Dupuis:
www.waxnine.com
sad13.bandcamp.com
www.sadthirteen.com
twitter.com/sad13?s=20