Three New Poems by Julia Horwitz, Cassandra Cervi, and Sara Barnett from Beautiful Losers #1
Denny’s
By Julia Horwitz
– Artesia & Aviation st.
– pull in & slip by
– gas pump & park
– quickly
bone color cream
& sugar please & thank you
ecosystem of ring finger & ear
ring still stuck on napkin, knee & sleeve
of saltine crackers, vinyl squeak faded
denim thigh & elbow
orbit around sunny
side up
table for one please & thank you
waitress bracelet twinkles & is baked
into whole wheat bread
dissociation:
baconcrunch between my combteeth
grease appears on someone else’s finger
back together on the same plate
please & thank you & I’m sorry & I’m sorry & I didn’t know where else to go please & sugar &
thank you:
– for your time because
– greasespot on pink shirt
– looks like bloodstain &
– resonates
stitch & pull:
face is getting hazy &
pancake will do instead
thank hashbrowns. thank syrup. thank sutures. thank residue. thank you. you.
eggyolk runs
like wind-up teeth
home is a place where you butter the toast
& crumbs get stuck in the platecrack
home is a place for evidence
waitress twinkles back
I want to switch shirts with her
you would look great in pink
thank you
I’d come to myself
bearing a nametag & say:
you don’t
even need
to ask.
Campo Dei Fiore
By Cassandra Cervi
Moonlight made mirrors of
scuffed cobblestone
so that the slurred entanglements of limbs and heels
and escape
could see themselves.
The vendors had long since
stolen away
but the flowers
the fountain
the fading statue at the funeral pyre
never left.
Looking out at the bars brimming with bodies,
shot glasses for eyes,
mouths overflowing with Italian that never really fit
our English laden tongues,
it was difficult to understand
why Milosz saw Warsaw and dying smoke clouds
when he looked
at the Campo.
But my shot glass eyes broke
and the word “help”
sounds more futile in Italian
His weight was
binding.
His mouth was my
gag.
His tequila-soaked breath
was gasoline on my neck.
Looking out at the bars brimming with blind bodies,
charred glass for eyes,
Giordano Bruno’s resigned thoughts
branded on my brain,
the Campo looked less like a poem
and more like a pyre.
Youthenasia
By Sara Barnett
Dizzy Gillespie blows, his checks like the grapefruits
My mother bisects and dissects into spoonfuls
On the cold green Formica of the newly redone kitchen.
I wish here, she’d light up a Pall Mall and lean the small of her back against
The countertop, her thin waist v-ed into an apron
Like June Cleaver’s,
And sing the blues.
“I haven’t got the time no more to do what it is I should
I ain’t been honest peelin’ this world’s icy rind.
Pay me no mind — been skating off to parts unknown and hoping me to find a glacier -
And break off.”
Just outside, before breakfast, I was shoveling in the drive.
There was a woman, pushing eighty, all good manners pushed aside; no longer
Careful with her words.
“Conceited stuck up bitch” came into her cough,
Her hand cauled around her cane and
She rubbed it, like there was nothing soft
But only a big ole hoary bump inside the skin.
This is not a woman’s game.
Getting older. Losing things.
Youthing. Youthenasia. A measured time for fame, a measured time
To sing.
Instead, my mother puts some sugar on the fruit
And wipes down her brand new counter.
“Save the cuppings for their juice,
Then go play among the powder.”
Dizzy puffs away,
I build a snowman tall. Too big to reach his head
And cannot hat it all. I fall down to the ground
And angel till she calls,
“Do you want cocoa?” But the bitterness of citrus still scrapes along my teeth.
I don’t know what it is I want.
But this snow, It’s nice and deep.
Cradle freeze for child, rocking in her sleep.
To read more poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from our new issue of Beautiful Losers Magazine, please visit our website at beautifullosersmag.com
