Crooked Teeth
I wrote a poem about loving your crooked teeth but
I never showed it to you because
it was a lie.
I lie about lots of things;
some things
But not that.
If the sun was god I’d be covered in cold candle wax
I always believed it was my worst quality that I feel break
up in my bones
that I’ve laughed so hard I’ve
pissed myself before
But I love my heart when it beats crooked
I look for answers that I won’t
find
And thank god
I don’t
understand
Thank god
my feelings aren’t
so
s
h
a
l
l
o
w
Thank god I don’t say what I don’t mean.
I know you still read my poetry, motherfucker
What saint do you
pray to when your starving mule
mind
throws your cheating ex’s stupid
face
into the radio and invents
floodlights?
Limbo is full of your white lighters
& half-finished bottles of lube
so I hotbox my car straight to hell.
I pierce the softest parts of myself
with pure steel.
What Betty Crocker book
teaches women
to boil blood blow lids shatter bowls?
to crawl into an oven
to break cheekbones against
baking racks ?
The Patron saint of revenge
was a Bad Bitch named Olga of Keiv who
invited her enemies over for a party and
then boiled them alive in her bathhouse.
If you can’t stand the heathen, stay out of the kitchen.
I stuff honey soaked beach
towels in the crack under every door.
And huff all my own holy horror
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorched.
I say a prayer and asphyxiate
the room.
Uma Thurman who art in heaven,
Hallow it be thy foot up Cottonmouth’s ass. Thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in Kill Bill.
Give us this day our daily bread and forgive all the times I held my tongue. Deliver me from these gaslightning gods. In the name of the Sissy Spacek drenched in pig blood, Lorena Bobbitt, and the bat to both headlights.
Call Dr. Horder. Amen.
Still Smokin?
(I am
I am I am)
The plant you bought me needs
a bigger pot.
I haven’t talked to you
in weeks,
after I spilled green jungle juice
on my ex
at a party.
On the way home
I told you
to shutthefuckup
I would again.
Last night I had a dream of
my best friends
dancing
with you
on New Years without me.
I can’t tell if it’s
last year / next year.
Of course it’s New Years.
When I was 13
I spent a whole year sitting
in my bathtub.
I wrote an entire book
about killing myself
on New Years and then I didn’t.
I never read that book again.
You never ask to read my
Writing.
Even
when I tell you
that I write about you.
Hayden Rigby is a senior at Louisiana State University graduating this December with a degree in creative writing. Her favorite thing about living in Baton Rouge is interning with Forward Arts, a non-profit organization that fosters personal and social transformation through poetry. Hayden was the winner of both the Dara Wier Poetry Award and the Matt Clark Award in 2018.
*Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Straylight, Gravel, The Phoenix, and other journals. Edward is also a published poet.
