Simone Savannah

LIKE WANT FOR HAVING

Sometimes it is the yellow-spotted bananas

on my refrigerator that make me think of you—

not for your touch or for the chocolate, but because

of the time you went to work and left me at your place,

said that if I got hungry,

I could have anything I wanted.

I thought if you had bananas,

I would crump dance in your kitchen.

but, no, you did not have bananas, so I ate your peanuts and drank your last bottle of water, thought about how you said

I could have anything.

I wondered if hunger is           why women get married,

not for the bananas,

but for the company and for the having anything.

I wonder now, if hunger is       why men send me strange messages about how they want to spit in my throat,

or call me baby or sweetheart and ask me

to say what I want

to do with their dicks and my tongue—

I have only wanted to eat you

and ripe bananas, and sometimes only want

to eat

you and I dancing in your living room,

taking shots of red bull and 1800

like you have no idea

I conjured you.

Simone Savannah is from Columbus, Ohio. She is currently a PhD student in Creative Writing at the University of Kansas developing her interests in sexuality, Modern and Contemporary women’s poetry, and African American literature. She served as the Assistant Poetry Editor of Beecher’s 3. Her work has appeared in Blackberry: A Magazine.