$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
