Photo: Remington neighborhood community center. “Baltimore Heritage from Baltimore, MD, USA, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons”
driving to the baltimore queer tattoo shop for
a tattoo from the tattoo artist i can never quite tell
about. hoping it doesn’t hurt. at the point
where more than five minutes of hyperpop makes me feel sick
to my stomach. fuck the dmv. i live
in the vdmdpnn (va, dc, md, de, pa, nj, ny). spreading
myself across the eastern seaboard. at the end
of the tattoo i ask the artist straight up
and they say no it’s not like that. specifically
requested an early appointment time so
i could avoid driving I-95 in the dark but
the tattoo took 5 hours and the sun
has set. my arm is tender and sore
from the tattoo and my headlights
are especially dim so to avoid getting sideswiped
by a semi i swerve onto the shoulder and
unintentionally drive into the jersey
barriers. i think my driving era is over. a bruise
is spreading where my seatbelt caught me.
sterling-elizabeth arcadia is a Best of the Net winning disabled trans writer and lover of birds, cats, movies, and her friends. Her work has been published in venues including beestung and The Missouri Review, and her debut poetry collection, DRIVER, is forthcoming in 2027 from Airlie Press, where she is a Poet-Editor. Her chapbook, Heaven, Ekphrasis, is available from Kith Books, who will publish her chapbook Transmasc Marvel Girl this April. She is the Interviews Editor for Fifth Wheel Press, which is based in Baltimore—her favorite place she’s lived.