Reader/Writer

By DENISE DUHAMEL

Lady Gaga says she truly cares about all her Little Monsters
and if you don’t believe her that is just because you don’t know her.
They send her fan videos, tell her about the bullying
and the beatings
and she takes it all in. One night a bulimic approached me
at KGB Bar.
Her eyes wet, she said, Your work has meant so much to me.
As she told me she was battling an eating disorder,
I felt so far away, as though I should have started to cry too,
and I did cry, kind of, but it was a fake nervous cry
because I was “on,”
performing a persona, I suppose. I was aware of the line
of people behind her, people waiting to have books signed—
that was so new to me, so weird itself. I said, Thank you
for telling me, which I knew was completely inadequate as I said it.
She was that someone I had hoped for since I started to write,
that someone my poetry had actually helped, yet in that moment
I flubbed it. If she had written to me, I could have written
something back heartfelt, grateful that a poem of mine
actually reached a person who needed it, a poem like a FedEx box.
The woman was disappointed, I could tell, as she slunk away.
I signed books and chitchatted with people who had
clear boundaries—
how perhaps I knew so-and-so, or how I should really try
the soba noodles at Dojo’s. The woman stood near a stool
with her arms crossed. I thought I could feel her stare,
but every time I looked her way, she was looking at the floor.
When I finished signing, I walked towards her to talk to her—
she looked at me, shook her head no, then fled down the stairs.
This was years before Lady Gaga, but I felt like a Mother Monster.

 

Denise Duhamel is the author, most recently, of ScaldBlowout and Ka-Ching!. She is a professor at Florida International University in Miami.

 

[Purchase your copy of Issue 10 here.]

From the beginning, The Common has brought you transportive writing and exciting new voices. We are committed to supporting writers and maintaining free, unrestricted access to our website, but we can’t do it without you. Become an integral part of our global community of readers and writers by donating today. No amount is too small. Thank you!

Reader/Writer

Related Posts

whale sculpture on white background

September 2025 Poetry Feature: Earth Water Fire Poems, a Conversation

LISA ASAGI
"We and the whales, / and everyone else, / sleep and wake in bodies / that have a bit of everything / that has ever lived. Forests, oceans, / horse shoe crabs, horses, / orange trees in countless of glasses of juice, / lichen that once grew / on the cliffsides of our ancestors, / deepseated rhizomes, and stars. // Even stars are made

Hitting a Wall and Making a Door: A Conversation between Phillis Levin and Diane Mehta

DIANE MEHTA and PHILLIS LEVIN
This conversation took place over the course of weeks—over daily phone calls and long emails, meals when they were in the same place, and a weekend in the Connecticut countryside. The poets share what they draw from each other’s work, and the work of others, exploring the pleasures of language, geometric movement, and formal constraint.

Anna Malihot and Olena Jenning's headshots

August 2025 Poetry Feature: Anna Malihon, translated by Olena Jennings

ANNA MALIHON
The girl with a bullet in her stomach / runs across the highway to the forest / runs without saying goodbye / through the news, the noble mold of lofty speeches / through history, geography, / curfew, a day, a century / She is so young that the wind carries / her over the long boulevard between bridges