POEM OF THE MONTH
July
Persona Poems
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Untitled by Albert Oehlen (2019)
Mold
I want to amaze
like moss but I fail,
sicken my suitors
with spore and fuzz.
Love me, love me,
I cry and eat corpses.
Leftovers for me,
my lovers have nothing
to say. I love you
lifeless and limp.
Watch me whisper
sex down your lungs.
I'm the star
of gothic horror.
The vampire queen.
A green scream.
A wet dream wanking
overtime for us baby.
You’ll never see my teeth.
They’re already buried in you.
Don’t come. I’m busy
making life from death.
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Anmol Priya Desai (any pronouns) is a non-binary poet and astrologer who recently received their MFA from Oregon State University.
“Mold” was a poem that began when my car was totaled after being consumed by mold. I came home from a trip and found my car covered in spores. Seatbelts blooming green fuzz and a wet floor. The few times I drove it before saying goodbye forever left my hands blackened. The cause was leakage through the sunroof. I thought it was really poetic that my red car from Arizona, the last thing from my father I had, was destroyed by rain in Oregon. I was so angry at mold. I wanted to make peace with her. This poem is my attempt.
The poem originally started in the 3rd person, but I employed the persona to get closer to the material. Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror” is a poem I love sharing with my students to teach persona and explore the function of a speaker in a poem. When a poem feels distant from its subject, the persona is a fantastic tool for revitalization. It brought the poem to life, as did my professors and colleagues who were generous first readers of multiple drafts. They've made me the writer I am today, and I am so grateful to have been able to write alongside them.
Anmol Priya Desai’s “Mold” seduces and repulses in equal measure, and I love it for refusing to choose. What began as an elegy for a car turned into something far stranger: a love song sung by mold herself. To inhabit the thing that destroyed you (or something close to you), to give her a voice and a libido, is audacious. “I want to amaze / like moss but I fail” — already we’re disarmed, the monster confessing her insecurities before she confesses her appetites. What captivates me most is how the poem weaponizes intimacy. Every line pulls you closer while telling you exactly how it will consume you: “Watch me whisper / sex down your lungs.” “You’ll never see my teeth. / They’re already buried in you.” That’s the horror and the tenderness fused. I also like how Desai wields the tiny couplets like spores themselves, each one multiplying, gothic and giddy at once (“The vampire queen. / A green scream.” — hah!). And that ending is just perfect: “Don’t come. I’m busy / making life from death.” To make peace with what ruins us, we have to let it speak, even let it be gorgeous sometimes.
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