Melissa Culbertson
3 poems
**
In Memory of Luke Perry
Under any other constellation,
The excavation of Lenin's tomb
Would have seemed almost routine.
Dull as a waxen face on a Russian
Revolutionary. But this was
Orion over the Red Square,
And I was wearing a slick crimson
Trenchcoat and Keds when
I spotted a mustachioed hombre
Twirling amidst a
Circle of Kremlin pigeons.
When he grabbed my hand
I knew with simultaneous and great certainty
The definitions of the words
Polymorphic, maelstrom, magnifico.
From the moment I met Luke Perry
I knew someday we would
End up wearing matching
Sweatsuits on some
Jersey boardwalk
Where he would buy me
An everlasting gobstopper
Because he said it was a metaphor
For our destiny.
Luke was more than just the cat's pajamas –
He was a dresser full of tiny calico
Nightgowns trimmed in lace and
Delicate crocheted rosettes.
His answer to every problem
Involved paint thinner and beautiful women
And that is why I never told him
of my credit card debt
or the way I feel
about the NRA.
Someday, when I am a
Taxi driver in a rural
Town outside of Athens,
Georgia, I will pick up
Strings of guys that look like
him but aren't him, and I will
Drop them off at bars and
Pharmacies and play
"China Girl" at
full volume, remembering
Luke's affinity for
giant rainbow lollipops
and speed metal.
As we are gathered here today
We can be sure
Of one thing:
in heaven, Luke Perry,
there's a unicorn
with your name on it.
**
In a Coma, special appearance by Robert Downey Jr.
Robert Downey Jr. eats candied carrots with me under an aluminum awning. I am unconscious. I am not unconscious. Somewhere, the bellow of tornado sirens and he hands me a carrot with his teeth. It looks like a tangerine cigar. It looks like the thumb of an oompa-loompa. He tells me a riddle and I tell him I don't like math or mustaches. He doesn't mind. He only wears one for a movie he's making with Sean Penn. I ask if it's about aliens or lawyers. When he tells me it's edgy, I know it's about both. We are busy reading leaflets aloud to one another, just to pass the time til Christmas. He's much better at it, but he reads scripts for a living so he gives me a handicap of 2. I sound like Katherine Hepburn on a bad day, quivercheeked and boozy. Everything I read is zoological. Ibex. Tapir. Yellow-tongued skink. Robert Downey Jr. laughs, and I know why. I sip a green apple soda. Aardvark. Wildebeest. Robert Downey Jr. tells me he'd buy me a Golden Lion Tamarin if they weren't so damned endangered. He's afraid of poachers, the African Starfish Flower, and large court-mandated fines. He's also afraid of me, but only when I talk about skeletons, or that one time when I used surgical equipment to make him a southwestern omelet for breakfast on a morning where I felt particularly methodical. He calls me Aranella. He calls me Hot Potato. Already he's forgotten my name, but he brings me Pixie Stix and pretends not to know all my good jokes, pretends my best jokes are really jokes and not just things I say to distract him from the mustache I know he can see in the noonlight, the carrot I have stuck in my teeth.
**
Every Story About Lindsay Lohan Exhibits Heavy Foreshadowing
Your name sounds like loan, suggests
sugar-rot. You drink
Tanqueray, Blue Sapphire. Kiss
drunk girls in pretty
cars. They begin to sniff you out, snuff your
smoke. But you aren't anything
like fire. They bar you from boats, afraid
you'd sink when that mink coat
takes water. There's nothing
funny about
.................................................you on a railing.
We solely see you ditch-
side / roadside / drain-
side or deep-sixed, stinking of
bleach and road-rust, coughing
Lucky Strikes, pillow-creased
cheeks. A scarf to hide those
hickies. A carve to
hide. There will always be
cameras, parked cars, your name
on a wristband. Things to smuggle.
You forget, but you were with
that knife. There's a photo.
Your sister only eats
oranges, and only sings in your
bathwater. Your mother calls
phone sex operators, hoping and not
to find your voice. Easier than
The darts-on-map method.
Try hard enough and you can be
burnt sienna. A black and mild in some
other milk, some other
mouth.
**
return to sawbuck 2.4
**
Melissa Culbertson lives in a south Chicago suburb, where she works two jobs and watches a lot of good and bad movies. She's a graduate of Lewis University and is currently shopping around for a good grad program in English. Her work has been published in or is forthcoming in Wicked Alice, Pebble Lake Review, [GROWLING SOFTLY], Melusine, or Woman in the 21st Century, and Thieves Jargon, and her chapbook, The Fire-Wife, is currently available from Dancing Girl Press. With her friend Susan Slaviero, she co-edits an online lit journal called blossombones. She likes museums, shows about serial killers and/or ghosts, and cupcakes.
**
In Memory of Luke Perry
Under any other constellation,
The excavation of Lenin's tomb
Would have seemed almost routine.
Dull as a waxen face on a Russian
Revolutionary. But this was
Orion over the Red Square,
And I was wearing a slick crimson
Trenchcoat and Keds when
I spotted a mustachioed hombre
Twirling amidst a
Circle of Kremlin pigeons.
When he grabbed my hand
I knew with simultaneous and great certainty
The definitions of the words
Polymorphic, maelstrom, magnifico.
From the moment I met Luke Perry
I knew someday we would
End up wearing matching
Sweatsuits on some
Jersey boardwalk
Where he would buy me
An everlasting gobstopper
Because he said it was a metaphor
For our destiny.
Luke was more than just the cat's pajamas –
He was a dresser full of tiny calico
Nightgowns trimmed in lace and
Delicate crocheted rosettes.
His answer to every problem
Involved paint thinner and beautiful women
And that is why I never told him
of my credit card debt
or the way I feel
about the NRA.
Someday, when I am a
Taxi driver in a rural
Town outside of Athens,
Georgia, I will pick up
Strings of guys that look like
him but aren't him, and I will
Drop them off at bars and
Pharmacies and play
"China Girl" at
full volume, remembering
Luke's affinity for
giant rainbow lollipops
and speed metal.
As we are gathered here today
We can be sure
Of one thing:
in heaven, Luke Perry,
there's a unicorn
with your name on it.
**
In a Coma, special appearance by Robert Downey Jr.
Robert Downey Jr. eats candied carrots with me under an aluminum awning. I am unconscious. I am not unconscious. Somewhere, the bellow of tornado sirens and he hands me a carrot with his teeth. It looks like a tangerine cigar. It looks like the thumb of an oompa-loompa. He tells me a riddle and I tell him I don't like math or mustaches. He doesn't mind. He only wears one for a movie he's making with Sean Penn. I ask if it's about aliens or lawyers. When he tells me it's edgy, I know it's about both. We are busy reading leaflets aloud to one another, just to pass the time til Christmas. He's much better at it, but he reads scripts for a living so he gives me a handicap of 2. I sound like Katherine Hepburn on a bad day, quivercheeked and boozy. Everything I read is zoological. Ibex. Tapir. Yellow-tongued skink. Robert Downey Jr. laughs, and I know why. I sip a green apple soda. Aardvark. Wildebeest. Robert Downey Jr. tells me he'd buy me a Golden Lion Tamarin if they weren't so damned endangered. He's afraid of poachers, the African Starfish Flower, and large court-mandated fines. He's also afraid of me, but only when I talk about skeletons, or that one time when I used surgical equipment to make him a southwestern omelet for breakfast on a morning where I felt particularly methodical. He calls me Aranella. He calls me Hot Potato. Already he's forgotten my name, but he brings me Pixie Stix and pretends not to know all my good jokes, pretends my best jokes are really jokes and not just things I say to distract him from the mustache I know he can see in the noonlight, the carrot I have stuck in my teeth.
**
Every Story About Lindsay Lohan Exhibits Heavy Foreshadowing
Your name sounds like loan, suggests
sugar-rot. You drink
Tanqueray, Blue Sapphire. Kiss
drunk girls in pretty
cars. They begin to sniff you out, snuff your
smoke. But you aren't anything
like fire. They bar you from boats, afraid
you'd sink when that mink coat
takes water. There's nothing
funny about
.................................................you on a railing.
We solely see you ditch-
side / roadside / drain-
side or deep-sixed, stinking of
bleach and road-rust, coughing
Lucky Strikes, pillow-creased
cheeks. A scarf to hide those
hickies. A carve to
hide. There will always be
cameras, parked cars, your name
on a wristband. Things to smuggle.
You forget, but you were with
that knife. There's a photo.
Your sister only eats
oranges, and only sings in your
bathwater. Your mother calls
phone sex operators, hoping and not
to find your voice. Easier than
The darts-on-map method.
Try hard enough and you can be
burnt sienna. A black and mild in some
other milk, some other
mouth.
**
return to sawbuck 2.4
**
Melissa Culbertson lives in a south Chicago suburb, where she works two jobs and watches a lot of good and bad movies. She's a graduate of Lewis University and is currently shopping around for a good grad program in English. Her work has been published in or is forthcoming in Wicked Alice, Pebble Lake Review, [GROWLING SOFTLY], Melusine, or Woman in the 21st Century, and Thieves Jargon, and her chapbook, The Fire-Wife, is currently available from Dancing Girl Press. With her friend Susan Slaviero, she co-edits an online lit journal called blossombones. She likes museums, shows about serial killers and/or ghosts, and cupcakes.
Labels: 2.4, melissa culbertson
