Third Prize winner of the FuPo Poetry Contest (2021)
~
A Giant Cocktail
If they layered disappointment
like fondant, folded it over
in rich layers, then maybe
it would at least be gorgeous
to look at— lord knows that shit
doesn’t taste good. And it’s not
meant to— rarely is something
beautiful on the inside and out.
It’s meant to hold its shape,
mimic magic— an edible wonderland,
entire worlds steadfast in sugar.
You hold on to this principle—
keep buying face masks
and concealers for the bags
and the dark circles and the dulling skin
and hope it will bring all of those
people you loved back from the dead.
Or lessen the scars on your lungs
and give back all of the breath
you need to climb stairs without struggle.
And then he tells you, he sleeps
in his make-up and you warn
him about what it will do to his pores—
you tell him there’s a charcoal mask
he might need; and he says,
it’s fine to sleep in make up just once,
and you think: how fucking naïve.
Because you can point to the sunburn
from this past summer where you got drunk
on Zima and passed out on a neon, pink
float in your two-foot backyard
pool and fucked up your forehead.
One mistake and indelible
lines assault you forever.
But you weigh the damage against this;
you floated listening to Belle and Sebastian
in the backyard of the house you now own,
trying to remember the first time
you snuck a Zima, or maybe even
you didn’t have to sneak it
because the owner of Al’s Pizza
let you try it because it was new.
You had that first sip and thought
this is nice. You didn’t have lines then,
but there was the grease of a pizza shop
in mid-July coupled with the New England
waterfront air, both so thick they clung
to your white polo and wouldn’t let go
until they left their mark in bacne.
~
Bree A. Rolfe lives in Austin, TX, where she teaches writing and literature to mostly reluctant, but always lovable, teenagers. She’s originally from Boston, Massachusetts, where she worked as a music journalist for 10 years before dedicating her life to poetry and teaching. Her work has appeared in Saul Williams’s poetry anthology, Chorus: A Literary Mixtape, the Redpaint Hill Anthology, Mother is a Verb, and 5AM Magazine. She holds an MFA from the Writing Seminars at Bennington College. Her first chapbook, Who’s Going to Love the Dying Girl, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in September of 2021. http://breerolfe.com/