Denice Frohman

DENICE FROHMAN is a poet, performer, and educator from New York City. A Pew Fellow and Baldwin-Emerson Fellow, she’s received additional support from CantoMundo, Headlands Center for the Arts, the National Association of Latino Arts & Cultures, Leeway Foundation, Blue Mountain Center, Millay Colony, Palm Beach Poetry Festival, and is a former Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion. Her work explores the complexities of language, lineage, queerness, and the colonial relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico. Frohman sees her poetry as a tool for social change, and cultural preservation, and aims to subvert traditional notions of power and knowledge. As a queer Nuyorican, Frohman is the daughter of Puerto Rican and Jewish parents. She played professional basketball in Puerto Rico after college, where she earned a four-year athletic scholarship, and earned her Master’s in Education from Drexel University. As a facilitator, Frohman has led workshops for adults and young people at The Watering Hole Retreat (faculty), Intercultural Journeys, Girls Leadership Institute, Youth Study Juvenile Detention Center, and at hundreds of schools and organizations. A former Program Director at The Philly Youth Poetry Movement, she worked to create safe spaces for Philadelphia teens to discover the power of their voices. Her passion to mentor young people has always been a central part of her work and she hopes to inspire them — especially young queer people of color— to know that their stories are worth telling. Along with a collective of Puerto Rican writers, she co-organized #PoetsforPuertoRico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria to raise funds and consciousness about the ongoing political and humanitarian crisis on the island. She lives in Philadelphia, PA.

First Kiss

October 13th

His lips must’ve been born in winter but I did it anyway and I'm proud of that. The boy

had pot-holed dimples a collection of white teeth so perfect you could tell God

got to him first.

In a dark room, I assembled myself the way I imagined any girl should: arms up in position and pregnant with waiting. He kissed me and I waited for the flood. I waited for God to gift me my own desire for the angsty snow to melt between us for the muscles in my neck to howl in an octave I've never known for the next chapter of my womanhood to appear and none of that happened.

When you get stood up by your own first kiss you feel like nothing belongs to you—

not even the promise of magic. Love is a rumor like Santa Clause. It lives in a pretty house that nobody has access to.

I must have had a bad past life I must have practiced on my hand too much. My mouth is a terrible orchestra the music it makes is foreign and uneven I am a thrift store of broken piano keys a visitor looking at myself from some window far, far away. I can't turn 17 and have nothing to say when someone asks if I know the choreography of heat.

October 28th

Laura's lips looked like two oceans put together on purpose like something you're supposed to get lost in and not know the beginning of and there's a whole world in writing that out loud for the first time. (I hope nobody reads this, it was her idea)

I sat down on her couch looking like a good example of desperation. I wanted to know if my body was capable of speaking to another body in a language we already knew. I wanted to know if I could inherit my magic. If this doom was a prank caller or if it meant I was gonna be alone for the rest of my life.

My mouth was mine and I know because I gave it to her. We kissed and my blood became

a congregation of songs. I wrote myself on the inside of a girl's mouth and I didn't even care. Every nerve in my body sprouted legs, my spine founded a country of fireworks—this is the only thing better than the Thriller album. Ever.

Every fizzle of me that was, now has a name. My heart isn't some Hail Mary of a prayer or the secret apology I keep. One day I'll write poems about the woman who loved me so deep I grew color in my bones. I know when they ask me about my first kiss, I'm gonna say I leaned in with all of my skin and only got half of it back I'm gonna say I work real good I'm gonna say that some things are only felt the second time around.

Published:

2015

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2023

Themes:

LGBTQ+ Experience

Love & Relationships