In Which the Poet Lies

I was named after the ocean and the ocean
I became: sonorous, cavernous, bleak

in lightless places, life luridly survives,
and the sparking brights of color pleased

 me, so with the spatter of vomit brine I birthed
my new names, pseudonyms, vicious

 eagle beaks, I screamed them and they were lost
in raw music of the eaten, the carnivorous

 the spilling over guts of your loud humanity,
mouth first seductive and then indiscreet—

 last night I shaped my body to woman,  
moved in the languorous promise of deceit.

 I was called a thousand names and each siphoned free
my sprawling, spurious oceans—pity me

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Sagaree Jain (they/them) is a poet, writer, artist, and queer from the Silicon Valley. Their writing has been featured in Autostraddle, The Margins, them. magazine, and The Offing, where they’re also an Assistant Editor. Their collaborative poetry collection with Arati Warrier, Longing and Other Heirlooms, is the winner of the Eggtooth Editions Chapbook Contest and is forthcoming spring of 2022. When not writing, they attend the University of California at Berkeley as a graduate student in Public Health and work as a researcher at the Othering and Belonging Institute. They are class and caste privileged and tweet at @sagareej.