BRIDGET O'BERNSTEIN
Image by Daniel Uncapher
The Fair
Katy & I go to the fair. I teach Katy to shoot the apple between the eyes.
We find two men with cowboy hats & big teeth & tongues, and we enjoy confusing
them with one another. We only have eyes for each other & don’t mind
who the men are or ask them what they want. We peer at each other over their thick
jacket collars. We let them put their arms around us. We let them take us on rides.
Big black Ferris Wheel. They shoot darts at the dumb fish while we pretend
to watch & hold each other’s hands under the table. We turn into small trees covered
in dangling fruit. Everybody gets a ruby cream cone. An archway dumps silver-pink
glitter on your head, down the neck of your blouse. We laugh & itch. Birds are downed
like planes. We don’t care much for love.
We find two men with cowboy hats & big teeth & tongues, and we enjoy confusing
them with one another. We only have eyes for each other & don’t mind
who the men are or ask them what they want. We peer at each other over their thick
jacket collars. We let them put their arms around us. We let them take us on rides.
Big black Ferris Wheel. They shoot darts at the dumb fish while we pretend
to watch & hold each other’s hands under the table. We turn into small trees covered
in dangling fruit. Everybody gets a ruby cream cone. An archway dumps silver-pink
glitter on your head, down the neck of your blouse. We laugh & itch. Birds are downed
like planes. We don’t care much for love.
The Savage
I tell Katy she is like my sister. Then I climb onto the railing and tell Katy I think
I might die today. She says, No Bridget, not today. We are going to race cars
against each other. We will eat watermelon. She is counting on her fingers.
You will stick a sparkler in my fist. I will look at you on my birthday, when I turn and
turn, and I will be afraid. Four, five. You will tell me that the sparks are cold.
They don’t burn. Then Katy takes me by my long hair and holds me ruthlessly
above water.
I might die today. She says, No Bridget, not today. We are going to race cars
against each other. We will eat watermelon. She is counting on her fingers.
You will stick a sparkler in my fist. I will look at you on my birthday, when I turn and
turn, and I will be afraid. Four, five. You will tell me that the sparks are cold.
They don’t burn. Then Katy takes me by my long hair and holds me ruthlessly
above water.
The Way I Love Frank Stanford
There’s a rendition of Mary Magdalene by Titian, where she looks exalted, her yellow
madrigal hair streaming out. She is opening, emitting some kind of energy like
a flaming hornet’s nest forced underwater by a small child, the tortured creatures
streaming out, their wakes like gold ribbons.
I am hammering myself to a wall and I can’t stop. I can’t stop for eight full
nights and then I go out walking in Carrara without a self, but I bring a knife in case
I want to get close to anyone. The way I love Frank Stanford is the way I have never
loved myself, until now. I put on yellow dress after yellow dress, yellow flowers
in my hair & cherry lace undergarments? I can’t remember something important.
Fuchsia lips. I’ve tried to explain this before. I love him the way I think I always
wanted to stay nineteen because I thought it was the hottest age and if everyone
wanted me I would be safe.
I love Stanford the way I feel when the light above me pops out, and I swear
into a hole in the wall. I love him the way I drove slowly with the dent in her left door
to buy a new bulb at Sutherland Lumber. And before I could make myself put it in,
I sat in the kitchen for hours holding it in my hand, slack, until the room and the
house and my body was completely dark.
madrigal hair streaming out. She is opening, emitting some kind of energy like
a flaming hornet’s nest forced underwater by a small child, the tortured creatures
streaming out, their wakes like gold ribbons.
I am hammering myself to a wall and I can’t stop. I can’t stop for eight full
nights and then I go out walking in Carrara without a self, but I bring a knife in case
I want to get close to anyone. The way I love Frank Stanford is the way I have never
loved myself, until now. I put on yellow dress after yellow dress, yellow flowers
in my hair & cherry lace undergarments? I can’t remember something important.
Fuchsia lips. I’ve tried to explain this before. I love him the way I think I always
wanted to stay nineteen because I thought it was the hottest age and if everyone
wanted me I would be safe.
I love Stanford the way I feel when the light above me pops out, and I swear
into a hole in the wall. I love him the way I drove slowly with the dent in her left door
to buy a new bulb at Sutherland Lumber. And before I could make myself put it in,
I sat in the kitchen for hours holding it in my hand, slack, until the room and the
house and my body was completely dark.
With Flowers
I gave a blowjob to a boy when I was seventeen and he was fifteen, our young insane
bodies working on a red rug hinged with white flowers in my parents’ house. He’d
never gotten head, he’d said, but he seemed comfortable enough with it. All men
are men. I might’ve been talking all night about how excellent I was at things--a short
blue shirt riding up above my sparkling belly button on the glowing swing set.
But I cried on his thighs part way through, and he had to hold me to get me to stop.
He bought waffles for us somewhere in weak light and we made careful conversation
about his life in the Hamptons. I climbed the stairs and waited for my parents to come
home so I could tell them nothing. I sat on the floor waiting, leaning my face against
a large potted plant, which felt cool. My mother might come in with bright keys
jangling, see my face red and swollen from crying and scold me, Why do you look like
that? She might gesture sharply, Come here Daughter, and run a brush roughly
through my hair, wetting the brush from a glass, dripping it on the table and winding
my hair wordlessly in tight dark braids I didn’t ask for.
bodies working on a red rug hinged with white flowers in my parents’ house. He’d
never gotten head, he’d said, but he seemed comfortable enough with it. All men
are men. I might’ve been talking all night about how excellent I was at things--a short
blue shirt riding up above my sparkling belly button on the glowing swing set.
But I cried on his thighs part way through, and he had to hold me to get me to stop.
He bought waffles for us somewhere in weak light and we made careful conversation
about his life in the Hamptons. I climbed the stairs and waited for my parents to come
home so I could tell them nothing. I sat on the floor waiting, leaning my face against
a large potted plant, which felt cool. My mother might come in with bright keys
jangling, see my face red and swollen from crying and scold me, Why do you look like
that? She might gesture sharply, Come here Daughter, and run a brush roughly
through my hair, wetting the brush from a glass, dripping it on the table and winding
my hair wordlessly in tight dark braids I didn’t ask for.
BRIDGET O'BERNSTEIN is from Brooklyn where she runs a poetry reading series called Sang for Nothing. She is currently an MFA candidate for poetry at Syracuse University, where she is a Poetry Editor for Salt Hill Journal. Her poems have been published in or are forthcoming in The Bennington Review, The McNeese Review, Jet Fuel Review and Forklift, Ohio.