baby, sweetheart, honey

By Emily Perkovich

baby, sweeetheart, honey is a poetry collection with a focus on the aggression against women and femmes, through a sexually fluid, sex worker's lens. Pieces touch on generational and religious trauma, mental health, addiction, woman on woman toxicity, the violent language and behavior of men (particula

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alien Buddha Press
• Release date: Jan 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9781959118183

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baby, sweetheart, honey

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Emily Perkovich

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Alien Buddha Press 2023

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Emily Perkovich 2023

ISBN: 978-1-959118-15-2

Contents Logo, company name Description automatically generated with medium confidence

Foreword, kind of      8

False Advertising      11

Visiting Regrets      12

It’s Funny How I Always Run Out Of Steam By The End Of The Poem      13

The Ballad of Maddy and Cassie      15

5      16

I Write Myself Into Your Shoes      17

And Change The Setting      17

Portrait of a Fever      18

We’re Getting a Divorce,      19

You Keep the Dishes      19

THE MATCH THAT SET THE HOUSE ON FIRE      20

Becoming the Lilliputian      21

Wild One Likes the Wild Ones      22

Something Black & Blue      23

May Crowning      24

D&C      25

why i’ll always be haunted      26

Drunken Blizzards      28

A Reaping, A Sowing      29

i don’t know how to hold pretty things      30

Fits & Bursts, Bits & Pieces      31

Chapter 3: The Things That Lawyers Never Tell      32

DMs      33

4.4.22      36

What You Stole from Me      37

Girls, Girls, Girls      38

i started using a menstrual cup      39

and this cycle has been different      39

I would tamp down my depression, but      40

a stigmata of the mouth      41

Lambs      42

I spend hours online reading about how many sexual assault victims use kink as a curative coping tendency to make sure I’m not more fucked up than I thought      43

"Stop burning bridges      44

and drive off of them"      44

Trigger Warning      45

for the Color in the Bath      45

16      46

Ode to Mytyl      47

Protest Sounds      49

my teeth have teeth of their own      51

what happens when the girl erupts?      50

Kinks      53

double helix      54

Barefoot Desperados      55

Dissonance in Discord      57

ECHO(echo)      58

No Inheritance      61

Weeds      62

Evanescent      63

Where It Hurts      64

12.10.22      65

4.2.22      66

Call It a Resolution      67

Ouroboros      68

Lima Echo Tango/Mike Echo/Golf Oscar      69

Birth as a Trauma      70

4      71

You’re Not Always the You of the Poem      72

The Year is 2021      73

Please Take Your Ghost from My Son      75

CamBaby      76

3.30.22      78

O, sleepy seasons!      79

I learned today that Bridget Jones was trying to lose 20lbs because she weighed 135      80

Dear Lucy      81

but the moth sheds the caterpillar’s fangs      82

Snuff      83

Girls in white dresses      84

I’ll burn my own funeral pyre      85

A Poem in Which I Talk to Myself Just Like in All of the Others      86

you drop to your knees and we both pretend to know something about prayer      87

subdivisions      88

Roxanne      89

4.10.22 or Frida      91

Notes on Previous Publication      92

about the author      93

Foreword, kind of

I can’t speak for anywhere else in the world but being anything but a cis-het white male in America is becoming increasingly difficult. It has never been easy. There was this small amount of time where it seemed like we were operating under these minuscule steps of progress. It felt like we were climbing two flights of stairs and then taking an elevator down to the previous floor—to expound on the two steps forward one step back adage. At some point that elevator started plummeting several floors at a time, and even with our feet pounding to make it to the next floor up, we are never moving anywhere but down, let alone making it to the penthouse. And did I mention that the basement is on fire, so the heat is increasing to climb back up with each fall? I’m saying that society is declining in more ways than I know how to quantify, but especially on a civil and humanitarian level.

Looking around at our neighbors, this doesn’t seem to be an issue unique to America. The only real difference is that America has been shouting for so long about how progressive we are, that we have shrouded our oppression under echoes that are still louder than our cries for help. The reverb of celebration over the smallest victories in equality is so amplified that even people here witnessing it are not able to see and hear how quick this decline has been.

I am terrified to be a woman here. I am terrified to be a person who is comfortable with my sexuality and with speaking out about it as frequently as I do. I don’t even feel that I can trust other women now, unless they have experienced similar traumas to my own, and sometimes even then, they seem to have undergone some type of conversion therapy to make them numb to the suffering that is bearing down on us all. I’m so tired of witnessing the judgement of what and how you are allowed to do, say, wear, feel, react, and cope to any situation or trauma. Especially from people forming those opinions from a place of ignorance. And I don’t even mean that in the negative, stigmatized way. I mean if you aren’t trying to be educated on something, then I think most people don’t want or need your opinion on the matter because a lot of the time it can be extremely harmful to healing and coping.

This collection is in no way comprehensive, because I don’t want to play the savior for everyone else. I