7.04 / April 2012

Two Poems

I Pretend Sometimes I am in Love

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_4/Leidenthal2.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

Come sit on my couch.
I sit in the middle so our thighs touch
and you will secretly like it. I like to close
the distance before there is distance
like a train that never leaves the destination station.
I don’t like change.
You shouldn’t give pennies to your servers
because they will jingle when they walk around.
My grandma said that. I don’t much like my grandma.
She is always changing.
Her face is melting off her bones
and now she needs a walker and a hearing aid.
She is dying. One thing is certain:
I want to die before my husband dies.
I don’t have a husband yet, but if I did, I’d want to die before him.
I am sensitive and once I have lost my loneliness
I don’t want to find it again. I want to be
arriving in the middle. There are women
with bangs, singing to acoustic guitars.
I am their best-loved chord.
I am the strap around your back.


I Got Drunk and Went Bowling

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_4/Leidenthal1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

The morning after there were bruises
and texts that read, “Holy hot, Wyoming.
I didn’t know you had it in you.”
In reference to being pushed up against a wall
in the men’s room at Houston’s Bar and Grill,
I am unapologetic.
I left the twins in the backseat of the car
with the windows cracked. They have each other.
I remember decorating the Christmas tree
when I was young and Dad drinking in the kitchen.
My Mom shoved a pair of underwear in her purse
and left for the night. Andrew cried over the garlands.
I read somewhere
Earth gets 100 tons heavier every day because of falling space dust.
I wonder if there is a limit to the weight gravity can hold
and why the Earth isn’t covered in space dust
and what space dust looks like
and if this universe isn’t just a snow globe
that is always being shaken when its space dust starts to settle.
Where you grabbed my arm to hoist me up to straddle you
that’s this bruise here.


Kelley Bright Leidenthal is a poet and Juvenile Service Officer outside of Omaha, Nebraksa, currently undertaking an MFA in poetry with the University of Nebraska. She holds the BFA from the same institution in Fiction. This is Kelley Bright’s first literary publication with hopefully many more to come.
7.04 / April 2012

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