Mel Sherrer
Mel Sherrer (she/her) is a lesbian/queer poet and performer. She received her B.F.A. from Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia, and her M.F.A. from Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Mel teaches and conducts Creative Writing and Performance Literature workshops. Her work is/will be featured in Storm Cellar, Variety Pack, SWWIM, Interim Poetics, Santa Fe Writers Project, The Racket Journal, Limp Wrist Magazine, and others. She currently resides in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Alone in Miles of Sagebrush
When my family asks me why
I have taken up hunting
when I can afford to just
go to the grocery store,
I say everything except,
there is something
I did not get to do, so now
I am looking for a corpse
over which I am allowed to cry.
Bittersweet Punchlines
When my therapist asks me
if I have fond memories
of my childhood
I rush to say, oh yes,
I’m in love with the memory of trees
and brambles so thick
only a child could worm through,
and red dust spinning up behind the tires
of bikes either too small or too tall,
my knees constantly scuffed and bleeding,
my sister and I sweaty as
a cold coke bottle in the sun,
and mama hoisting yellow cats
up the rocky, creek bank.
Yes, I go to those memories
like pressing a finger into a bruise,
funny kind of pain, bittersweet.
If We’re Talkin’ Ancestry
A piece of paper
with pie charts and percentages
will not tell me
which of my foremothers
had strong medicine,
whose cooking was legend
amongst a chain of children before me,
who hurried tides, planted bare-handed
and brought the changing of seasons,
whose ferocious speeches inspired warriors
to stand in the face of enemy armies,
which one overthrew her jailer,
which one made the law on her land,
who could raise a crowd with her voice,
who could hush a room with her face,
whose hair was long past shoulders
or braided up into a crown.
A piece of paper will not tell me about the majesty or magic
who mothered me, and that’s what I want to know, friend.
Jaded
I am tired of explaining
to people who do not understand
the diversity of people
that beautiful things
are also beautiful to me,
who is queer.
My first kiss
was in a run-down, three-story schoolhouse,
no air conditioning and cement steps,
jade tiles in the halls and bathrooms.
My first kiss
was with a chestnut-haired girl,
she had an accent from Philly,
brown eyes, she wore sweet pea perfume.
After years, the building was condemned,
then reduced to a pile of rubble.
In passing one day, I told my friends
that I wanted to jump the construction fence,
and grab a few of those tiles from the debris
to commemorate a memory.
I said, to remember my first kiss.
with a girl?
they asked, and howled with laughter
never slowing pace
as if that kind of kiss
is something a person should want to forget,
as if it was just an old
asbestos ridden building being torn down.
Now, that is how I remember my first kiss,
someone laughing in the foreground.