FreezeRay:  Poetry With A Pop
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sarah Nichols

The Next Day
 
I wake up, still sick, and
read a text from my
best friend, telling me
 
you’ve gone. I
check the internet,
that new denial of
 
death, outpourings
and misquotations,
 
so many I know
it’s true.
 
I take some more
cough medicine, and
go back to sleep.
 
This is how stars die
now:
 
I post a poem about
you and the universe, and
 
take a picture of your album;
pretty it up with an app.
 
It’s all I’ve got to offer.
 
I watch some of your
videos,
 
reach out to the
ex who loved you.
 
I go out,
hoping no one will
 
see you now that you’re
dead.
 
I’m wearing a shirt
with your name on
it. It’s too tight,
too transparent. I’m
too old for it.
 
I shop for clothes, looking
for an offering, a
 
leather jacket
 
from the 70s, an orange
radiation that
glares like plastic in the
 
bathroom selfie I
take when I get home. I
 
call my mother, and ask if
she remembers seeing you
 
by a stage door in
New York in 1980.
 
No, she says. No, I
don’t remember that.
 
I’m sorry.
 
All I have now
is the first time I saw
you on television.
 
Put on your red shoes,
you said.
 
Run.

On Trying to Like Robert Z. for a Man
 
Trust me on this: it
never works.
 
In some midnight
all night conversation
 
you say
 
it ain’t me babe or
 
don’t think twice and
 
then it’s
I love you but
 
deep down you know
that you don’t care
 
if Robert went electric.
 
It’s more the booze
excitement in his voice,
 
a long
playing record that
 
you can’t get enough of.
 
The needle jumps. Brings
you to now.
 
There’s a record in a box
somewhere, a poem that you
 
wrote about him.
 
You save the lies for
your own story.
 
 ----
Source: King, Stephen. The Shining. New York: Signet, 1977. Print.

Sarah Nichols lives and writes in Connecticut. She is the author of five chapbooks, including How Darkness Enters a Body (Porkbelly Press, forthcoming, 2018) and Dreamland for Keeps (Porkbelly Press, forthcoming, 2018). Her work has also appeared in Rogue Agent, Bad Pony, and Anti-Heroin Chic.
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