Bindweed Editor Joseph Robert’s collection of poetry and prose is now published by Cyberwit! It’s available for £10.94 on Amazon UK and $15 on Amazon dot com.
You can read more of his writing at his author website at http://www.josephrobert.home.blog
Happy reading!
Cellulite dimples through her black leggings, the scent of weed woven in her untamed hair. We drive to Grimaldi’s. I say it’s my favorite restaurant. But it’s not.
We split the spinach salad. “You can have the red onions and cherry tomatoes,” she says. She sucks on the bacon and picks out the blue cheese. But it’s not.
“Gorgonzola,” I tell her, “is more mild.”
“On your first time, dessert is on the house,” the waitress says. A dragon inks her left arm, a nose ring hangs on her septum.
We say, “Yes, it’s our first time.” But it’s not.
Dinner over, we say, “Let’s do this again.” We take home the Reese’s peanut butter cheesecake—made on site, split in half. She, slowly now, says goodnight.
Later, in bed, I eat the cheesecake out of the to go container, the whipped cream dwarfing the slice. And then, I rip the bong.
I wish it was the whole dessert. But it’s not.
Elizabeth Jorgensen is a teacher and writer. Her memoir of sister Gwen Jorgensen’s journey from CPA to Olympic Champion is due in 2019 from Meyer & Meyer Sport. Shorter works appear in Harvard University’s Azalea: Journal of Korean Literature & Culture, Wisconsin English Journal and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, among others.
ETUDE 13
Once upon a time in Pennsylvania near a battlefield, you
Cast your blouse to the wind of a stereotypical March day
Where bluster grabbed the green of silk ’cause nothing else
Was green enough to grab. Flight’s a wondrous thing
If it’s relatively rare, and you aren’t a pilot, a cormorant,
Or a flying squirrel, and—No thanks, I don’t need scissors
To cut through the spaghetti straps of your slip, that’s what
God gave me a great big mouth for, and yon cannonballs defy
The atmospheric elements entirely because we still believe
Their time to fly is imminent. Well, it’s time for us to make one
Another feel much, much, much the better; it’s time to bring
ourselves to a lovely, rolling boil: My oh my what you can do
With your breasts, your tongue, your toes! My oh my the feast
You serve heaped up between your hands! My oh my
The flights you cause above the grass at Valley Forge!
JULY FIFTH
Some roman candles that would not launch now get the heel of my yellow boot. Can you imagine flame biting deep into these colorful bad boys and then finding no retort of any kind posting through the nighttime sky? So I raise my foot and pound it down again and again, I stomp dud fireworks into the ground, and now you murmur in my ear that multi-hued corn can grow and flourish here if we drop a kernel or two on top of the ground-in candles. I say to you, “Understand, lovely pear, I really don’t give a shit, the theory sounds phony and melodramatic to me, but no problem, no problem, I’ll certainly go along. Let’s use more than one ear of that dried-out maize.” At the same time, I keep saying to myself, sure, if tossing corn on fucked-up fireworks can warm her little heart—can bring my head ever-closer to that fluffy prize—then bombs away, my-one-and-only, let’s toss out oodles of your pretty seed.
MY MERRY WAY
All my late and recent life
I’ve wanted women ever younger,
Ever dumber, ever wider,
Ever richer, ever weaker.
I’ve carved your nickname
In a fencepost near my ex-wife’s hacienda,
Though I’m not worried about her reading
What I call you, or scraping up the money
To find my distant, graffiti-ed ass.
Rather, it’s your butterball, retard, infant
Neighbor in diapers wove of platinum thread
Who’s grabbing me tight as bondage now
And won’t soon let me go
Along my merry way.
William C. Blome writes poetry and short fiction. He lives wedged between Baltimore and Washington, DC, and he is a master’s degree graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. His work has previously seen the light of day in such fine little mags as Poetry London, PRISM International, Fiction Southeast, Roanoke Review, Salted Feathers and The California Quarterly.
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