by Stevie Edwards
Calling Her Names
wolf that picked me up by the scruff to keep
as a play thing
a play, I can’t figure out my lines, where the audience sits
a plush purple chair in my past with cigarette burns
where my death sits where she screams out
at a man throwing me around a living room
dance party poor swing dancer where she screams me out
of a cab the man caught pouring
his martini into mine again and again Beauty
Bar Chicago Call her the love
that eats me for breakfast Call her the love
that asks for my hand in tornado
and barfly in stomp out the room until
it’s time to be a better song call her chaos-
lover call her burns the whole damn house down
after eviction call her house call her
changed phone number call her I can’t
pull scrap metal from a field and build a getaway
car can't play fiddle with toxic strings can't play
dead anymore call her disaster porn
call her I’m too fucking tired to look anymore call her and say
it's okay you're okay it's okay call her my name
After Party
After the party there is the after party and after the after
party there is the after after party. Trash
dance. Flash romance with a handsome
bar tab. Radiant night held in a gulp of blank
goodbye. Goodbye moon, my name is
wonder cunt. You can’t pull
the blood out of me with your bright stare
tonight. Goodbye romance,
my game is Hearts. I am always two-suited
and too slick for you. I take the spade
queen out for brunch. Bitch loves hollandaise
like I hate holidays. It’s not that kind
of party. No eggnog, no glittering evergreens—
beer and bacardi, a room whirling
bodies around its bloated belly. Goodbye
dance floor, I am warm and radial. Redial
the number of a man who called me
cunt and meant abscess or absence. Absinthe
makes the heart grow glow. I can go out
into the street and piss my name if want to,
cry if I want to, die if I want to, kiss
my bare knees if I want to. But it’s not my party.
Nothing stops when I wander. Bachata
booming through the snowy lawn. No voice
of God or concerned confidant asking
what tide pulls me out out and away
from the fun of neck musk sugar legs
galore. When I kneel down in the driveway
cooing, It was never your fault—to a girl
in a Holiday Inn a decade ago drowned
in the opposite of yes, that dread water, I am
more scabbed than taffeta dress. I slide into a glass
of whatever is left inside. Lazy spells for riddance:
Do I look pretty in this drink? Goodbye wonder,
my game is darts. I barely hit the board.
Goodbye handsome pulling a coat over me.
Flash into the after the after after party
cab. Into I am a sore site for worship and need
hollandaise and aspirin. Into don’t call me
until this goodbye sky fades back into a woman.