Loki & Me

Poetry by Maria S. Picone

“It seems that all that was good has died/and is decaying in me...”

-Disturbed, Down with the Sickness

the feels when you can look at the TV and say, that was low-key me. not gonna lie, I’m not so whitewashed that I’m the only raven-haired sorcerer in a warrior-king family, not so colonized that my blood runs blue with frost runes and lightning blonds. I’m one generation removed from an Italian boy at a white high school, microaggressions passed on to me: Italian stallion, Italian Korean. I’m from a different war

-torn country, bisected like the Bifrost under great ringing blows of geopolitics. but you opened up your hate and let it flow into me, onscreen, nauseated by the knowledge we didn’t fit into a family. even one that wanted us. that struck me hard as Mjolnir—was I not here

to be entertained?—as these little jokes meant for fun (“he’s adopted!”) tore a portal to the dark wilds of a heart. othered monsters for white heroes to beat

down. & the world laughed at our ridiculousness, hulk-smashed into an outline of our broadest corners. we writhed in pain on concrete comfort asking, “what more than that?”—we painted the silver screen black dealing with these changes, living with [           ] & we became: more

of ourselves, more of contradiction. the world is a scary place; the nine realms of silence rule strong. race [         ]. colony [             ]. government [            ]. woken up, the demon in us, the truth. NGO
[            ]. contractual [          ]. birth family [              ]. erased & reclaimed, you willingly fell. mom, Queen  [                 ]. dad, King  [                  ]. adopted, pawn [           ]. we can never achieve nostos; we will always be homing back to that which never wanted us. & when I dream
​

Maria S. Picone

Maria S. Picone/수영 is a queer Korean American adoptee who won Cream City Review’s 2020 Summer Poetry Prize. Her debut chapbook, Sky Sea Edict, will be published in late 2022. She has been published in Tahoma Literary Review, The Seventh Wave, Fractured Lit and more, including Best Small Fictions 2021. Her work has been supported by The Juniper Institute, Palm Beach Poetry Festival, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, GrubStreet, Kenyon Review, and Tin House. She is Chestnut Review and The Petigru Review’s managing editor, Hanok Review’s poetry editor and Uncharted Mag’s associate editor. Find out more at mariaspicone.com.