just bad

Shakespearean sonnet during a Shakespearean Sonnet Discussion
By Amanda Ramsey

A boy, fresh as the dawn and sweet as a shining green pear,
And blonde, the color of my Dream Baby fake hair, and a face
that’s flecked in freckles, like tossed small rocks, a hop and a scotch.

He gargles and spits out answers, swan-dives into the
Shallow-end, bless his tender, merry heart,
He jots notes with the furious, flapping vigor of a kid blue-jay,
Finally free from his brothers and sisters’ messy nest.
The Jay praises the sky, kissing and crying in the mirth of it all.
His new liberty, a holy union with the soft air.
Tears squeeze out of the Jay’s eyes, blessed, as he squints
into the blurry and beautiful blue.

The boy then squints, hiding that blue, as he peers at my paper,
The question asks: “What is raising love’s banner?” The answer—
It’s the rising tide of love that lifts the heart to the face, a blush.

not alanis

He vanished like a coffin, sinking into the cozy earth.
Except it is far worse because he lives.
He lives to drive another girl to a lake with a nighttime mist
That’s like magic, rising awake, only to drift sleepily at your waist.
He folds into this girl, kisses her soft pillow of stomach,
his hand fitting into hers like a tree into the ground.
They are warm and flushed now.
Yellow lights play on his face and shine like halos in his hair.
But it's just the car headlights fleeing passed us—
passed them.

You should know—
My glad heart swelled every time, into this pink water balloon
inside my chest. My heart inhaled you like a clove’s grateful kiss.
That cinnamon taste, the Christmastime, the brief and giddy dizziness
brings me back to you. To a younger time, when our teeth would clink together
like toasting wine glasses, and I’d point at you with a cocktail straw,
laugh and say, “That was your fault.”

the what

I self-destructed on a couch last Friday night.
Falling into my mind, I crashed into sleep.
But my friend still vibrated, full and splendid
from the night’s Newcastles. She felt super-abundant,
like a bursting August sun, her voice charging with power.
He asked her, “What’s really with Amanda?”
She pauses for her answer, as he regards her words.
Her eyes search the floor for a singular truth,
a way to capture a person with a butterfly net.
“Amanda is pessimistic. She is cynical
and doesn’t trust anybody.”

This week, as he sits on a coffee table, he tells me,
“We talked for, like, six hours, about everything—
with you sleeping between us. It was,
like, way more than I ever wanted to know.”
I’m looking down, comparing my bicep to his,
I say, pleasant and smiling,
“Oh yeah. I figured she’d want to talk
to you about Tyler and Laura.
It’s so weird that they’re together!”
“She talked about you, too.”
I turn into a stone that’s been kicked,
“What? Really? What’d she say about me?”

maybe.

He vanished like my grandfather’s coffin, sinking slowly into the cozy earth.
Except it’s worse because he lives, living to take another girl to
a lake with a night mist that is like magic drifting above your waist.
He folds into this girl, kisses her soft pillow of stomach, as Air plays
Softly in his car. They are warm and flushed now. Light plays on his face.
It's the headlights passing by us, by them.

My glad heart swelled, even when
Our teeth clinked together
Like toasting wine glasses.
I pointed at you with a cocktail straw,
Laughed and said, “That was your fault.”

When you played “Lover’s Spit” in
My dorm, you asked the question,
Flushed with hope, “Are you sure?”
You know, I think it’s time
that we grow old and do some shit.

music videos

“Kick a Few Flows”
(William Carlos Williams poem)
By Amanda Ramsey

I left your house with the wind,
Drifting beneath the door like a draft,
Into a seven o’clock
and glittering morning.
A time when the sky falls
in love with the earth,
Descending and draping
itself in the treetops,
Clinging and lying,
cuddled up sweetly in the streets.

I’ll be bold for just one, tiny second--
So listen closely!
I think your obsession with
Notorious B.I.G. is cute.
And that you have him on vinyl
Confounds me, completely.

Again, I’m sorry if I frightened you
With that Lady Gaga video—
I saw that collapsed look
fall over your eyes
and your lashes lower
to the small plums of your cheeks.
But I promise you—
Don't worry. It’s only pretend.

The truth sits beside you,
Working hard to calm the
deep and amorous
Tympani of her heart.

A bedtime story

“Something inside the antique mirror haunts you.
She has talons that can claw your eyes out,” I say to Teddy.
Just repeat, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary. It’s her dismal death chant.

Then, flush that pretty commode and she’ll grab and pull you through.
“I can feel her breathe beside me,” said dear, dear Betty.
A gentle slumber gone grim, after that bathroom rant.

Upon the witch’s special stake, a young Mary Worth was brewed
Then, like hot English tea, she was served to the twenty.
Excited, the sun leaves for home, and my candlelight’s growing scant.

Her scorched face looks like Quentin’s scraped knee, it’s true.
“Protect us from that dreadful witch!” shout my children, the many.
Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, my household’s miraculous chant.

I whisper to that dreadful phantom, humming that hymn, “Where are you?”
“Don’t taunt! She’ll get upset!” says my youngest, Little Penny.
I offer my softest bathroom prayer, “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary,” I pant.

My world is darker than a bathroom, sick like the flu,
Slippery axes struck all of Olive and Ernest, Victor and Benny
Each plucked, cut clean, like a rotting plant.