Three Poems By: Siobhan Bledsoe | The Quietus

Three Poems By: Siobhan Bledsoe

New writing this week comes from Siobhan Bledsoe — incidentally also the author of the first-ever accepted poetry submission on this website —in the form of not one, not even two, but three poems and a selection of complimenting photographs (including one NSFW)

$24.80


I avoid home because I’ll sleep alone, again.

A fan isn’t a lover; I bought one today.

I seek a/c at our local watering hole.

I leave; inside jokes are suffocating.

Exiting is an art.


I hail a cab; "to Barbes!" I tell him.

This is before I knew

Stephane Wremble cancelled his set.

I used to go with her. She’s gone,

somewhere in the middle of America,

somewhere where flatness is a reality,

cornfields and Midwesten large teeth.


As we drive, a couple walk in

matching Adidas sneakers in stride.

The cool kind.

The kind that never go out of style.

The kind with three colored stripes that

we’d argue over in grade school.

I hate Adidas. For the moment.


I want to drive to a neighborhood

where the laughter sounds older,

lived in, always existing outside

and under warm light.

I’m in a vintage dress only for me.

Maybe that imaginary man sipping

wine on a Sunday night, outside,

will think its for him.


We pass Dean St., but it reads as Dear St.

It is the first day of Summer.

It is Father’s Day.

Clouds costume the moon.

I am that cloud; I am that shrouded moon.

Where is my solstice sex?

Before tonight released a moon,


a well-postured girl

straddled a

bike while kissing her boyfriend.

I’ve never seen such an ass.

Such a bike.

Such long, makeoutable hair.

I forget how bad my posture

is in public; I’ve been alone so long.


I hang out with younger people

because they’re not couple exclusive;

can’t I decide when I’m the third wheel?

You all bore me.

You bore me.

Young and old; the places we are

supposed to be at, the places we aren’t.


Drugs bore me.

Alcohol bores me.

Is it because I once

put a tab of love under my

tongue and let it dissolve?

No high like that high.


I want you to be like mustard,

good even when bad.

Being alone is like

riding the train without

a book, dead phone,

no headphones.


This poem cost me $24.80

and one train ticket home.

What is it now? $2.75?



The Field Trip

for esme blevgad


Dying young hurts heaven harder,

they escaped before “what’s ahead”;

heartbreak, taxes

                (paying and evading)

all the lonely people

                (being lonely)

understanding Eleanor Rigby

                (then becoming)

the lyric too.


Not all yellow buses are driven by

unruly red-headed teachers wielding

magic and spitting at Space.

Not all have the integrity of Mrs. Frizzle.

Not all hearts know when two mouths meet.


At sixteen she saw Florence

discussed stairs and structures

skimmed a parent-given book

over red wine

sneaked in to giggly hotel rooms

after sticking tongues down throats

under the light of a disco ball.


Mothers and fathers never

forget the first time

their kittens

leave their litter box.

Mothers and fathers relentlessly

sift through, mothers

and fathers enjoy cleaning

poisonous expulsions.


In Llinars del Valles

he reached for her hand

under the table. She held it.

Her mother saw her daughter’s smirk

while hanging out with vanity

in the mirror before bed.


Ascending out of Barcelona,

over peaks the adolescents

weren’t yet ready to climb,

her father reached into

his bedside table, next to his sleeping wife,


and exhaled a pot thought:

my depression is malignant.


in the morning he realised

white people commit terrorism.


She’s now where it doesn’t hurt,

hopped a ride on an escalator, took

a field trip that heroin addicts take

to wink at life, and get a free

pass into the after party.



how fast


"no one here is a gamer," my roommate answered when an IT stranger asked
what Internet "speed" she wanted over the phone.


all i know is that the Internet saves and ruins lives.


how fast that has to happen, i don’t care.

we are on the tip of a transition, that i know.


when i imagine the future i think of a giant bowl of pasta made from al dente
spirals of stress.


i eat it and then burp. i don’t yak, though.


the night before this call, my friend, a great american song writer, showed up
to our haunt; the one we always swear to avoid, but go nonetheless.

where we tag our own crushes in the bathroom

to make the graffiti incest permanent.


the one named after a Godard film most patrons haven’t seen.


she had gone drunk canoeing. the deep purple looked like the first purple
ever created by Earth; it was painted by the first hands made to paint.


a wide-eyed bartender walked by her like a gust of wind, teasing, "Kayak
Queen."


her bruise sounded like the man who drummed that night. i stood

next to his girlfriend. she must have been the prettiest girl from Idaho.


i wonder if she knew it.

i surely told her.


all of these feelings arrived at the fastest speed.



Siobhan Bledsoe is a poet and writer who enjoys taking photographs, wearing loud lipstick, and performing poorly on the drums. She resides in, where else but Bushwick

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