CURBSIDE DIRGE
Jackson Burgess How sweet it is to drink too much coffee and smoke under the manic flatness of streetlamps while cars drive by and police choppers float overhead. I wonder if it matters who's on the pill, or who's taking Prozac because they can't stop staring at bridges. Last night I slept in the library, where I could see drunk students wandering along the quad, laughing, tripping on boards and empty cans. I wanted to hear what they were saying. I wanted to follow them home and listen as they drunk-dialed exes and slurred pleas for them to come over, maybe catching dial tones, maybe having clumsy sex they wouldn't remember. Sometimes I think we're kidding ourselves when we say we know what we want, or whom we'd like to fuck, or how many times we've been talked down from rooftops by loved ones. How lonely it is on the freeways where everyone is in sight of each other but so awfully out of touch. How strange to see friends with razor scars and tattoos under their clothes. It doesn't matter. I can fall in love on the metro or on the moon and I'll just end up on this same dusty corner, blowing smoke on strangers as they walk and keep walking away. |
About the author:
Jackson Burgess studies at the University of Southern California, where he is Editor in Chief of Fractal Literary Magazine. Jackson has placed work in The Monarch Review, Bluestem, Jersey Devil Press, Vayavya, Sundog Lit, Atticus Review, and elsewhere, and has received multiple USC Provost's Fellowships for his poetry. He leads a workshop on Skid Row and has a nice photo here. |