Lily Trotta is a NYC transplant born and raised in rural Connecticut. In 2016, she received a B.S. in Media, Culture, and Communication from NYU, where she also studied Creative Writing. When not writing poetry and fiction, she makes cookie dough, over Tweets, and tries to pay her rent.

2 poems by Lily Trotta

kitchen sponge

there are few with whom i am so honest
as with the kitchen sponge
which knows what i eat and when and
with whom
and knows when i clean
or don’t
and whether i am thorough.
the sponge is yellow
but sometimes it is blue or orange, or it has
a rough green backside
for scraping miserable moments—
burnt cheese,
ruined baking sheets,
and other things i didn’t soak—
and sometimes the sponge has got all sorts of shades
tomato
and mustard
and orange juice
it sucks their colors,
listening while it cleans, like a kind mother
it makes dishes feel revived
and waves them off with
       a touch to the heart, a tilt of the head,
       and a loving
       smile.
if you could go inside the sponge, i mean really
swim into it,
you’d find exhaustion in the black of my tea
and inhibition in the white paste of my flour
you’d find murky red, and it would confuse you
because there is happy wine
and sad wine
and also soup.
the sponge knows my hands on its pores
delivering life and color
and it wishes me well.

handsaw

i will lock my teeth in the meat of your leg,
wide mouth wet; i want to feel the hair
pasted to your shin with spit, and muscle
twitching on my tongue.
i will dig until i reach white
fibers in your bone and you splinter
like a Christmas fir
gnawed sloppy and heathen,
and i will be livened to the taste
of fight. i chew until your calf bleeds dry;
you are a felled tree and you
will have to kill your girl.