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nuclear devastation and quick kisses

by Gabriel Ricard

The girl most certainly isn’t any kind of Sister Aimee.
She’s just a former gentle heart. Some poor body and soul
that went mad the way heroines do
in the kind of old songs that sound best
when there’s a few buckets of bloods along the wooden floor.

She got the spirit too late. Long after her bad dreams turned
waking, drooling and babbling.

Twenty-four-years old. What a tragedy.
Twenty-four-years old. Watch out for her long fingernails.
Twenty-five years old. Wait a year, and maybe it’ll be different.

In the sense that someone from her poor family
will finally find her, finally take her away in a poor blue car.

He trims his blonde beard,
right down to the way she said she loved it that one time,
and he wears a suit that would save the life of a healthier man.

And he hopes no one ever takes her away.

Selfish love is still a type of affection,
and as honorable a way as almost anything else
for staving off the kind of identity crisis that kills.

He brings her flowers on Thursday. Whatever falls
from the 67th floor of the flophouse that used to be a hospital,
in what is now and forever the best place to score the good stuff
on Stadium Avenue.

He risks life and two or three key limbs for those flowers.
They’re cheaper online, somewhere along the misty frenzy
of Chinatown, or even at some dirty, massive grocery store.

But he’s never been able to trust any concept of easy money.

Good music is a mash-up of nuclear devastation and quick kisses.
Love may or may not be finding the right dance number to bring her back.

Forty miles in the wrong direction is worth it if fortunes change
as seamlessly as hope changes its mind.

Forty miles in the wrong direction is worth it if the memories
don’t flood, so much as they just soak through his shoes.

Fifty miles in the right direction ain’t no fun at all.

And he wonders. He drinks hotel lobby coffee,
mixes it with something righteous,
and remembers the time when she was healthy enough,
yeah, man, amen, strong enough
to tell him he was a real cutie pie for trying so hard.

He wonders if she remembers that,
and he wonders if he could ever just grab her
at the elbow, spin her into his arm, and move her
into whatever steps are needed to shut her up.

Just for a minute. Long enough for something,
anything to work whatever magic is on hand.

01/14/2013

Posted on 01/15/2013
Copyright © 2025 Gabriel Ricard

Member Comments on this Poem
Posted by George Hoerner on 01/15/13 at 01:07 PM

Magic is the point isn't it? Without it, it really doesn't matter; it's just one step after another. The righteous stuff helps one through the night or the day or both. Nice write Gabe.

Posted by Elizabeth Shaw on 01/15/13 at 02:05 PM

the ending is miraculous in its hanging druggy way - O for that kiss, that love into safe oblivion.. nice

Posted by LK Barrett on 01/15/13 at 03:40 PM

...a dear, wry, bittersweet wreck of a love story, told with your usual lazer-dot on the forehead elegance and parsimony. Not a word or emotion out of place, it held me there that long. Hell, I even backed up a few times in sheer pleasure. love this write, my friend. lk

Posted by Joan Serratelli on 01/15/13 at 05:30 PM

I REALLY do love your stories....and "getting there" (so to speak) is fun. I have often wondered where you get your material. Hard to believe that one person can come up with so much in one piece- in other words- great write!!!

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