4 by sasha fletcher
you are a beauty and i am alright I told you to pretend that I was attractive and it worked. I took your hand in mine and we walked to the punch bowl and punched someone in the mouth. We went for the easy joke with pride. We went for the door with great purpose. After that we started a life. We stacked wood in piles like they were birds. We call this a cabin because that is what it is. There is a radio in the corner and it is playing static all night long because that’s the only station we like and there are whole nights where I could pull my limbs off and knock all of your teeth out because I just love you so much. You tell me to try it. You dare me. Upstairs the night sky is a stampede of horses just begging to be broken. I tell you to hike up your dress and show me your legs your knees your thighs and everything in between and when you do the whole world collapses around us and we finally learn the meaning of love it was right there in front of us the whole time. It was so obvious that I am not even going to talk about it. associate lecturer I have been hard at work upon a lecture regarding the meaning of life and death as it relates to i) friendship ii) the particular despair that causes one to feel completely alone when surrounded by hundreds of friendly vikings and iii) the ever-welcoming glow of the all-you-can-eat buffet. I promise you that this lecture will be heartfelt and full of sympathy and also wisdom, plus it will contain directions to the portal that takes you to the land of the dead where a tall man in an even taller hat sings sweetly each night. He sings O Darlin I am far from home but I can hear you singing me a song about how I’ll never see you again and our tears will fill the tubs that all our feelings finally die in and when I tell you this I’ll be crying and that is just fine because real men weep openly. This is how come there are oceans and if you don’t like it then you can all just go ahead and forget about it. Maybe afterwards we can meet up for a drink! I will be the guy in the corner wearing his jawbone like a tiara and looking like the loneliest man who ever lived and not one of you will be able to say that you did not love me then, in that instant, if only for a moment. loud mouth I am going to take you to the notary and get you notarized. I plan to appear before you as death itself all dressed up like a skeleton and riding into town on a skeleton horse or some other form of dirt bike and then I am going to sing to you. I am going to sing to you about how I have never loved a soul before like I love you now and other sweet nothings is an album I am thinking of recording. Its cover is going to be a picture of you completely naked and dressed up like a ghost. I am open to suggestions is a good joke I could tell you if you were the kind of person who liked jokes. The fact that you are not the kind of person who likes jokes is one of my least favorite things about you. My favorite thing about you is how you remind me of the days when our hopes and dreams just tear themselves apart. I mean picture this: The sun is rising up in the sky and setting flame to the procession, that one, right there, and we are standing hand in hand and promising each other things that will never be repeated and I have put five hundred children in your belly and you are getting prettier by the minute and we are in a speedboat sailing the asphalt seas of parking lots with our five hundred children each one of them somehow causing us to love every one of them even more until our hearts have grown other hearts to handle the load and what more can we say here except that the boat crashed and the children were swallowed up by the parking lots and they all died and we never saw them ever again and that is the best way I can think to describe how I feel when I look at you. feel good event of the summer The president decreed that we the people should try not to feel terrible so that bandits do not come and cut off our faces to wear as masks while they kidnap our children and raise them as their own. The president said Our children are a national treasure. He said Our children are the gilded icebergs of our hearts. He said Who wants fireworks? And we all said I DO. |
SASHA FLETCHER is author of the forthcoming poetry book it is going to be a good year (Big Lucks Books 2015), one novella, and several chapbooks of poetry (including dear gloria, dear madeline, dear siobhan, dear ethel, dear eloise, dear wendy, dear becky, dear lisa, dear liza, dear michelle, dear tamika, dear tanya, tonight (Big Lucks Books 2014)). |
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