FreezeRay:  Poetry With A Pop
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Alice Paige

It’s Better to Burn Out Than Fade Away
​

gets its sticky, tar hands in all the suicide notes
like shotgunning sad punk songs in the middle
of the night – track after track straight into back
of mouth is unhealthy but we don’t want to say
because therapy ain’t punk. punk is filling yourself
against a graffiti’d bathroom stall. punk is the
sound train tracks make when no one is around
to hear cold air on steel rail & rain & empty.
punk’s a legacy of dead friends & dead friends,
like what is there to sing about if not the loss?
until we become the loss in a moment of blaring
sadness running itself through church speakers
& by church I mean my ribcage
& by church I mean my skull

 Pints of Guinness Make You Strong & Other Lies

we drive down an empty street on the way home from the bars / took two shots for the road /
one to take the edge off / one to ensure we would blow over .08 if we get pulled over / “we”
being the driver / but pretend the risk is the same/ it’s a lie that gets us home some nights / the
CD is loud & skips every time we hit a bump / the front bumper rattles & rocks in its duct tape
frame / queer bar rats flinch as cop car passes/ laughing & shit faced / Zeek & Jesse crack jokes
about some guy who fell into some chairs / the steering wheel feels smooth & cool & spring air
blows up from a hole in the door / the back wheels whine as we pass over the tracks Charlie
killed himself on / the others in the car pretend not to notice / everyone notices / small town
Iowa makes a disappearance loud / the alcohol & the drugs struggle to reach that volume /
Jesse laughs & we high five over something / I don’t remember what / I wish I could remember
what / I was doing when we all fell apart / spread out across U.S. highways / like deer blood
streaking its way through the night / dead dear on a busy highway always feel like a sign / this is
where we all end up / when enough headlights & fear get mixed together in the dark / the high
five splatters its way back across the median / & one of them blows over a .08 one night /
disappears for a few months / stops responding to texts / & we do another shot for the road /
to keep the edge off / to lie that it keeps the edge off / the edge meets a deer’s legs / & we
crumple / pints of Guinness churn in a hundred stomachs as the bar lights go out / & so do we /
& Jesse high fives me & I don’t remember why / but it was funny / & we got home that night /
all hug each other / all smile & sweat whiskey


Alice Paige is a transgender woman and poet living in St. Paul, MN. She has a spoken word album titled Bleed Through and is published on Button Poetry and Coffin Bell. She is currently an MFA student at Hamline University.
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