alicia sometimes
breakfast in kreuzberg
all those things you said about Brecht when i was
staring at your cheek [riffing about geometric curves
the way you wear shirts like it’s Prague all year round
you had to go & get drunk at four
knowing the blunt [weight of what we had to say
your eyebrows knotted apostrophes
your sour pout stenciled to the first word
every year we have this conversation & each stumble
is lethargic & never gets us anywhere closer [the quips
are glassy & languid & it was time to go swimming (remember?)
your sunglasses grumbled
your mood elastic & a drowsy portrait
the way we had looked at the grave & you said you were
never in the mood to read Anne Frank even though
you knew it was important [all those things you said about
Freud when i was picking through the cheese
the museum had gripped us but the toast was sunburnt
vinyl chairs were latched to our shorts & the air was framed
there’s you nuzzling the coffee talking [about
getting it out another time [there’s me wondering
which city we’ll meet in next year for mock games & Beck afternoons.
dirty poet
filth fountain
forked fang
you stinky stinky word
hot shuffle your way out of this
you wear verbs like fifties fashion
fuck your way out of bad debt
eat off anyone’s plate
common metaphor
sleeping with everyone else’s lover
scraping meaning off other people’s shoes
always looking for a loophole to
strangle yourself with
making sex sound flamboyant
enjambment unimportant
indecision your fixture
playing fisticuffs for more air time
feasting on your failure
fattening the ego of the sought after
generalizing this generation
swelling your bio to laudable
lone martini
sole marvel
alicia sometimes has worked as a bookie’s bag lady and played bass in a hula hoop grunge band. She is co-editor of the Australian literary journal Going Down Swinging (www.goingdownswinging.org.au) and a presenter on Melbourne radio 3RRR with a weekly show Aural Text dedicated to playing spoken word. Her first book, kissing the curve was published in 2003 by Five Islands Press.
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