Stevie Edwards spent her formative years in Michigan and now lives and works in Chicago. She is the Editor in Chief/Founder of MUZZLE Magazine, and she has poems published in several literary magazines, including *PANK*, *Word Riot*, and *Monkeybicycle*. She is a part of the Real Talk writing collective in Chicago, and she regularly attends the Vox Ferus After Dark workshop series.

Four Poems (September 20, 2010. Issue 21.)

Say You Were Never Sixteen

There was no apartment 
in Battle Creek, MI,
melancholy as its tenants,
minor league Yankees 
whose English stumbled 
over pick-up lines. 

No Bud Lite bottle filled
with cigarette butts, wobbling
on a leaning coffee table.

No second string pitcher
pleading, Baby, please
don't smoke. You too young,
as he teasingly took a slow
drag, exhaling hard in your face.

You didn't command, Give me 
a motherfucking cigarette. You didn't need 
ten tries to work the child-proof lighter. 

You didn't puke neon 
for an hour alone, after 
spiking a blue raspberry Slurpee
with cheap vodka.

There was no ceiling fan 
whirling July air heavy 
with arroz con pollo. No bedroom 
crammed with air mattresses.

No Aventura love song 
whining from a boom box. No 
punched-to-shit door to close.

Reasons for Giving Bad Head to Melky Cabrera, Spring 2004
 
Because my lover was in the living room
(which had been turned into a bedroom,
which had the air mattress we'd fucked on
a couple hours earlier) phoning his best
girl in Venezuela. Because I wasn't drunk 
but wished I was. Because we were bent 
on breaking each other. Because I met 
that ugly girl waiting for him to come out 
of the locker room after his game—
the one with the bad corduroy pants 
and greasy hair who he'd fucked during
a double header in Gary, Indiana. Because 
she stared at me when he kissed my 
cheek. Because I didn't believe I had anything
pretty left in me. Because I had silky hair 
down to my waist that could cover my face 
when bent over. Because I was trying 
to prove I wasn't as young as the soft skin 
of my thin limbs. Because I needed to find
a new bed to sleep in that night. Because
he didn't talk as much as his teammates.
Because he didn't speak enough English 
to hurt me. Because I mistook his silence for 
sexy, his smile for kindness. Because his body 
was harder than a wall. Because his fingertips 
were strong enough to bruise me. Because I didn't
mind running myself into him. Because I didn't want
to sleep with his teammate  who'd called me
into the room, who heckled our clumsiness
from a mattress on the floor across the room.
Because I couldn't go home. Because I was afraid
of my father sniffing out the musk of sex
in my tangled hair. Because I thought my body was
a receptacle. Because I didn't love my body.
Because I didn't praise my throat, didn't know
the resonance of my own voice. Because my lover
was in the next room phoning his best girl
in Venezuela. Because I couldn't go home.

A Cartography of Need
 
Our bodies have become weapons against
the slump of unemployment lines and the cost
of good meat. I've only held the weight
of a handgun once, couldn't tell you the make—
I put it it down. It didn't misfire like the rifle
Don's boy held, and there was nobody else
around for the bullet to hit. It's hard to reason
with the whiskied grief of a man with one
dead son and one son shrouded by accidental
guilt. When I was still too young to understand
gravity, I lollygagged across the rafters of their barn.
There were good ropes for swinging.
I can almost conjure the boys' faces, split into
watermelon grins, spitting the black seeds
of yelps against the hay. We are not snobs
about entertainment in these parts.
On the highway between Albion, MI, and the nearest
movie theater there are two adult toy stores.
I once traded a man who loved me long distance
like the fidelity of dawn for a sparkling purple
rabbit, something a little more mechanized.

On Working in Woodlawn, Chicago
 
A woman at the 63rd  bus stop stares at my feet.
She likes my silver shoes, she says. Another woman
at the bus stop has lilies behind her ears. She drops one
on the sidewalk, says they look pretty on girls,
but men won't touch them. People smile a lot here
for the south side. I get off at a church bigger than
The Capitol. I have an office in the church.
There's a Bishop in the church who has shrunk
into a boy. There's a Bishop in the church who put garbage
from the streets on the first Mayor Daley's desk.
There's a Bishop in the church who says our work
is God's work. He doesn't ask where I've woken.
I hope there'll be no weeping church hats today.
I can't take the sadness of strangers—old-lady-hands
with pink manicures clutching my arms, stories
beneath spitfire weeping about good fathers,
church goers. There are men in the church halls
who smile and tell me I am blessed when all I want
is to heat my tofu and rice. There's a microwave
in the church that smells permanently of barbecue.
I don't eat barbecue anymore. I've woken
next to two men who blessed their food
before they ate, who ate mostly fish. I quit eating
dead animals because I didn't know how to pray
for such sacrifice. My aunt gives the blessing
at holiday meals, or sometime my father
if she's gone. On fliers for summer youth programs,
community organizers advise me to bold and enlarge:
Free Breakfast and Free Lunch.