L.T. PELLE

IN ANOTHER LIFE AMY WINEHOUSE BECOMES THE ROLLERSKATING WAITRESS SHE DREAMED OF BEING AS A CHILD

Imagine, it only took a shitty hairnet to stop her

hair from becoming so high that it teased the heavens

with its thoughts of stardom. Being open 24-hours

is a lot like only saying goodbye with words,

like dying 100 times and tying those ghosts around her

body like an apron, the softest shield. And who else,

but the dead could bare your spills for you?

Except perhaps a song, which is to say Back To Black

still exists here, not on the radio,

but in the way the laminated menu slashes

the light. Fryers sizzling with the sound of ellipses spitting

themselves back up from the pan in resurrection.

Here, there are no butterflies in her stomach,

only a jukebox of unturned pages. She is right

side up in every spoon. Valerie’s heart beating

in time with the hands on the Heinz 57

even though she still gets trapped

in the bottle sometimes. Sometimes, the night blackens

like the open mouth of a saxophone,

but Amy’s got clocks contraltoed to her feet

so that when time flies

she stays close enough to the ground to never leave.

The moon, a radio dial turning up all the silence

that was the other lifetime

where we treated her death like an early bird special.

Where we vinyled her life dark and centerless,

an album we could stick our pointer fingers through.

Her songs are so much safer here,

in the blue shade of a pen tucked behind her ear,

who listens to them pouring infinite

free refills back into another world

where the morning is not enough

to keep a person awake.

PANTOUM FOR MILEY CYRUS'S WRECKING BALL

I want to lick the part of the elegy I don’t have to hold onto.

Be reminded of what it tastes like to be so unbroken

everything around me shatters when I sing the walls into welcome.

Give me heartache and whatever other midnight is lit like this.

I want to be reminded of what it tastes like to be so unbroken

a blazing fall catechism of Doc Marten sadness.

Give me heartache and whatever other midnight is lit like this.

What black sun will I hold onto when the one you gave me blinks

into a blazing fall wrecking ball of questions and anthems.

Yes, I’m crying, but I can’t tell if I’m sad anymore or if

this black sun I’m holding onto is the one you gave me.

I’m losing the staring contest I’ve been having with memory

so, yes, I’m crying but I can’t tell if I’m sad or if I just need to blink.

We do not always get to see the ceiling the chains hang from

I’m losing the staring contest I’ve been having with memory

Sometimes the body is wherever the Disney ends and the demolition begins

We do not always get to see the ceiling the chains hang from

I want to lick the part of the elegy I don’t have to hold onto.

Sometimes the body is whatever rough heaven rubble will submit to my best ballad

everything around me shatters when I sing the walls into welcome.

L. T. Pelle is a student living in New Jersey with her 2 dogs. Her poems have appeared (or are forthcoming) in Rattle, FreezeRay Poetry, and 3Elements Review.