Three New Poems by Julia Horwitz, Cassandra Cervi, and Sara Barnett from Beautiful Losers #1
By: Beautiful Losers
Tags: Alt Lit, Literature, Poetry, Poems, Free Verse

Denny’s

By Julia Horwitz

– Artesia & Aviation st.

– pull in & slip by

– gas pump & park

– quickly

bone color cream

& sugar please & thank you

ecosystem of ring finger & ear

ring still stuck on napkin, knee & sleeve

of saltine crackers, vinyl squeak faded

denim thigh & elbow

orbit around sunny

side up

table for one please & thank you

waitress bracelet twinkles & is baked

into whole wheat bread

dissociation:

baconcrunch between my combteeth

grease appears on someone else’s finger

back together on the same plate

please & thank you & I’m sorry & I’m sorry & I didn’t know where else to go please & sugar &

thank you:

– for your time because

– greasespot on pink shirt

– looks like bloodstain &

– resonates

stitch & pull:

face is getting hazy &

pancake will do instead

thank hashbrowns. thank syrup. thank sutures. thank residue. thank you. you.

eggyolk runs

like wind-up teeth

home is a place where you butter the toast

& crumbs get stuck in the platecrack

home is a place for evidence

waitress twinkles back

I want to switch shirts with her

you would look great in pink

thank you

I’d come to myself

bearing a nametag & say:

you don’t

even need

to ask.

Campo Dei Fiore

By Cassandra Cervi

Moonlight made mirrors of

scuffed cobblestone

so that the slurred entanglements of limbs and heels

and escape

could see themselves.

The vendors had long since

stolen away

but the flowers

the fountain

the fading statue at the funeral pyre

never left.

Looking out at the bars brimming with bodies,

shot glasses for eyes,

mouths overflowing with Italian that never really fit

our English laden tongues,

it was difficult to understand

why Milosz saw Warsaw and dying smoke clouds

when he looked

at the Campo.

But my shot glass eyes broke

and the word “help”

sounds more futile in Italian

His weight was

binding.

His mouth was my

gag.

His tequila-soaked breath

was gasoline on my neck.

Looking out at the bars brimming with blind bodies,

charred glass for eyes,

Giordano Bruno’s resigned thoughts

branded on my brain,

the Campo looked less like a poem

and more like a pyre.

Youthenasia

By Sara Barnett

Dizzy Gillespie blows, his checks like the grapefruits

My mother bisects and dissects into spoonfuls

On the cold green Formica of the newly redone kitchen.

I wish here, she’d light up a Pall Mall and lean the small of her back against

The countertop, her thin waist v-ed into an apron

Like June Cleaver’s,

And sing the blues.

“I haven’t got the time no more to do what it is I should

I ain’t been honest peelin’ this world’s icy rind.

Pay me no mind — been skating off to parts unknown and hoping me to find a glacier -

And break off.”

Just outside, before breakfast, I was shoveling in the drive.

There was a woman, pushing eighty, all good manners pushed aside; no longer

Careful with her words.

“Conceited stuck up bitch” came into her cough,

Her hand cauled around her cane and

She rubbed it, like there was nothing soft

But only a big ole hoary bump inside the skin.

This is not a woman’s game.

Getting older. Losing things.

Youthing. Youthenasia. A measured time for fame, a measured time

To sing.

Instead, my mother puts some sugar on the fruit

And wipes down her brand new counter.

“Save the cuppings for their juice,

Then go play among the powder.”

Dizzy puffs away,

I build a snowman tall. Too big to reach his head

And cannot hat it all. I fall down to the ground

And angel till she calls,

“Do you want cocoa?” But the bitterness of citrus still scrapes along my teeth.

I don’t know what it is I want.

But this snow, It’s nice and deep.

Cradle freeze for child, rocking in her sleep.

To read more poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from our new issue of Beautiful Losers Magazine, please visit our website at beautifullosersmag.com