Two Poems by Patrick Mullen-Coyoy
Ariana Grande Guts a Fierce Deity
Ariana enters into the final day of her novena
masticates jagged prayers between her teeth
until her fledgling tongue quiets
into soft murmurations
she reaches the threshold genuflects
enters into this cathedral of vices
where so many before have sought asylum
she offers her pésame to the spirits
filling the aisles
these ghosts of trauma past echoing forth
to bear witness to their fierce deity
her staccato stilettos fill the silence
their reverb ricocheting off tile and stone
like so many bullets in her onlookers’
emptied eye sockets
reaching the altar she raises hands up
to the moon above this city of her dead
commands the crowd
light me up
bind me up
touch it touch it touch it
she lays her body down
and their hands do
adorn her
gouging and gashing
this self-declared goddess
of American excess painting caravans
of bloodletting across the pale canvas
of her larynx
and their hands do
adore her
cracking open her chest
releasing bloody melisma
of lung and heart and rib
a testament to the violence endured
in the journey from field to mountain
valley to river
these are the sins endured by her kingdom
made manifest
tracks of skin flayed penitential
touch it
crown of barbed wire and laceration
touch it
the sacrifice of a body rendered
into an exquisite corpse
the promise of salvation if only they will
perform this litany and
touch it
touch it
touch it
the spirits bear her up
like a contorted melody
throats aching with the memory of
righteous fury
finally loose in death finally visible
in the threnody of their cries
here at last lies their remittance a debt repaid
in the form of a diva offered up
of her own volition
bathing this darkest isthmian night of the soul
in the refracted sounds of this
frenetic purgatory
moonlight pooling dismantled
in the shattered wreckage of her hands
Ariana
fills the threads of her lungs
bites her lip
and breaks open the sky
her wail rends the moon from its observatory
begs it to descend upon the prison of these
walls
and in turn the moon rebukes her mantle
echoes the call
vows to stand by no longer
and plummets to the earth
with celestial lethality
the spirits bask for mere moments in this
ruined moonlight
ultraviolet reflections filling in the details lost
to borders and disappearances and archives
before exiting the memories
of where the cathedral once stood
dust settling on their skin
their tongues begin to form words
not spoken in weeks decades centuries
as they welcome themselves back
they set out to build their own sanctuary
IN MEDIA RESURRECTION
INT. BERNARD B. JACOBS THEATRE – 3:00 PM
I pay one hundred and fifty-seven dollars to mourn him
the day after I touch down in New York, purchase entry into
matinéed darkness to hide my catharsis in row G.
CYNTHIA ERIVO splits from sister, from lover—
the rhythm of her grief harmonizes with my own. Oboe and flute
duet, passing a skeletal leitmotif between them. Playing together,
they sketch out a palimpsest of pitch, bruising over my sorrow with purple.
INT. MICHIGAN THEATER (SCREENING ROOM) – 11:15 PM
I pay ten dollars to watch KRISTEN STEWART seek out a haunting.
She leafs through art books, tries on lingerie, texts her dead brother,
hoping that this murder, that shattered mug, those bangings on the wall
might mean that the ghost stories she tells herself are real.
When she finally receives her answer, the blunt specter
of confirmation, I reach out next to me, fingers searching
for the warmth of a hand I’ve never touched in the chill air.
INT. CELEBRATION CINEMA (THEATER 12) – 9:36 PM
I pay eight dollars to watch NATALIE PORTMAN emaciate herself,
the bloodstained legacy of assassination dyed into her
pink pillbox hat. She dances among a throng of technicolor shades, shudders.
We both feel it—the first impact, the bullet of this laconic score
piercing through temple and membrane, rupturing the memory
of what we’ve lost with a cruel, determined lethargy. She knows
how her husband died. I don’t know how he did. Both are tragic.
INT. NCG CINEMA (THEATER 7) – 10:01 PM
I pay nine fifty to watch JESSICA ROTHE splice her body
into a montage of happy self-mutilations: a final girl fighting
against survival to reach a timeline where her mother stays alive.
Alone in this theater, I sing along as Paramore underscores her
suicides and my own hard times. But I’m still not dead
in this timeline, where he sings beside me. Where I let go
of his hand as the credits roll. Where he lets me exit. Lets me live.
*
Patrick Mullen-Coyoy is a queer, Guatemalan-Irish poet and college access advocate based in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, MI. Along with increasing the number of students getting to and through college, he loves stitching together poems involving pop culture icons like Ariana Grande. His writing appears or is forthcoming in The Acentos Review, Barrelhouse, The Kenyon Review blog, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Underblong Journal. You can follow him on Twitter at @aguacatemalteco for more pop culture poetry.
