Vanessa Batyko

Vanessa Batyko is a poet from Los Angeles. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern California, where she received the 2018 Beau J. Boudreaux Poetry Award and the Jimmy Gauntt Memorial Award. If you live in LA, she might be your next Uber driver. Her work has most recently been published in Gravel and Semantics Magazine.

Attachment’s not grown out of

but transferred to things more certain: Bible

journaling & cough drops, 3 rings

you even shower in. I know a man who sucks

his thumb at 30, says he wants to be held

the way people hold money. We watch

Elimidate & Star Search, reality TV

from before I was born. I know a woman

who yells when you stare at her tattoos too long.

I’m known for toting around a small

orange horse when all I want is to hold

mom’s big department store hand.

I wish grandpa had a Facebook

so I could stalk him like an ex, poke

him even though he’s gone. I’m tired

of naming my life’s items after people

who’ve died then tossing them in my purse

for later. I’m wearing my

moles so as not to lose them, but

if you find them, please treat them right.

Never take them home the back way,

never buy them shots of Sazerac Rye

& clutch their dizzied heads, saying,

I’m like an old piano— you can’t get rid of me.