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.
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.
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.