Two Poems

by Jill Kitchen

crush

it was neon lights in a strip mall, the flame of red letters
on yellow, big gulps bigger than a teenage torso

clove cigarettes stubbed out against the humid
virginia night, mosquitoes & the breathing dark

waiting to creep in against mostly empty parking lots
against the stir & sweat of all of us who couldn’t wait

for the clock to touch midnight so we could count out
our cash drawers & get back in our cars to crank music

we bought with slow-earned cash & employee discounts
to head somewhere other to basements alone

where we could keep blasting the sound of our still-forming
hearts to a friend’s house where we would smoke cigarettes

& clutch video game controllers or fumble fingers against
instruments to mirror back those same melodies that split into soul

to the backseat of a car where our mouths exhaled into the ear
& neck of another while song our only true crush surrounded us

it was belonging when you weren’t someone
who ever belonged anywhere

beneath the angst & longing the knowing
there were those who understood you

so much more than the others
the ones who didn’t breathe music

the ones who didn’t live for ticket stubs
& sticky floors of dark clubs beneath doc martens

before driving to another neon sign
a silver train car stretch of diner

where outside you inhaled tree leaves
& summer’s musk

before walking into the fluorescence
where the cook with the long grey ponytail

that fell to her belt glared as you walked in
i’m still on my smoke break for 15 minutes

so you slid into a booth
drank cokes or stale coffee with too much sugar

flipped through the jukebox
to spend more quarters on music

patsy cline the ramones
sleepwalk by santo & johnny on repeat

while weaving the caffeine
of your dreams into song

watching the clock until you could order
plates of fries & patty melts

before vanishing back
into the static-hum of night

to be seventeen again and living on nothing but music

the way it felt slipping loud out of an open car window after midnight, virginia roads, the lush green of it all. nowhere to go, no invitations. only the velvet company of song, of one hand on the wheel, the other out the window twisting into rhythm. traffic lights blinking yellow, too late for their red and green variations. the 90s rock and roll pulse of pj harvey and hole, nine inch nails and soundgarden, pearl jam & smashing pumpkins, digable planets & miles davis’s kind of blue, the album one of the guys you worked with at the record store recommended. and oh so much mazzy star, hope sandoval’s voice capturing that lonesome night ache. the cowboy junkies beneath the blue gloss of moon. you weren’t old enough to live on your own, but you had this, your dad’s car that you would sneak out without him knowing, the stereo turned up until you lived inside the sound, inside the voices that spoke your soul songs, inside the amplifiers, the electric guitars and echo pedals, the sweat of drums, the hidden heartbeat of bass. you were going to do that, be a singer in a band. that must be what you were meant for. you strummed your acoustic guitar until your fingertips burned and bled, their rusted steel scent afterwards. you were always distracted by that silver whir of yearning, never quite sure where to place it. on the books and albums stacked next to your bed, on the view outside the concrete apartment building window that opened into mother of pearl skies, on your favorite surfer-haired singer, on the boy with black hair and skater shorts standing outside of tower records to bum a clove cigarette off you. no matter what happens, something inside you knows you will remain true to that slip-fall of longing in the gut. you would do anything for it, follow it anywhere.

Jill Kitchen is a writer and poet living in Washington, D.C, though her heart can still be found in Colorado, New York, London, and the record stores of her teen years. Her work has been nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions and appears or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Birdcoat Quarterly, Citron Review, Crab Creek Review, Four Way Review, HAD, North American Review, Split Lip Magazine, and a road-trip themed anthology from June Road Press. At age 10, she won imaginary lip-syncing and garage roller-skating contests. She was once the singer in a band that rehearsed but never played a show. Her favorite vacation spot is hanging out after midnight with the stray cats that live in the ancient ruins of the Largo di Torre Argentina in Rome, Italy.