FOUR POEMS by OLIVIA BRALEY
burning haibun
once i was grounded for the rest of my life so my dad took me to florida. i was twelve and then thirteen, once. i had sex, just once. my parents thought me a problem once and that the solution was in the sunshine state, all strip malls and sunburn. i don’t know what they thought they could undo. it was summer once, and then again. the air hung humid with an awkward fact between us. at least once, my father maybe hated me. still, he took me driving. in the gravel parking lot behind a warehouse. i’ve been nervous more than once. like when i first got behind the wheel of this rental car, or when i first straddled a boy not knowing where anything was going. i only got up to thirteen miles per hour, light on my foot that could hardly reach the pedal, feeling already too fast. this was the year everything went too fast. with my dad next to me in the passenger seat, once, i felt in control. i set the radio to whatever pop station playing whatever pop songs were popular there and then. this was the year that p!nk had that song about, so what. and my dad for whatever reason liked that fucking song. and my dad turned it up as i drove across the parking lot, feeling too fast and going too slow, and he told me to speed up but i didn’t want to, but once i lived in the year of too fast, so i hit the gas as he was singing along, so so what.
my life was just a problem once
, all sunburn. summer hung humid
driving nervous light on everything
too fast to control: the radio, the pop songs,
the year. that fucking feeling
told me i didn’t want to, but i lived
to sing.
my life, all summer,
hung on. every radio
didn’t want to sing.
almost cowboy blues
maybe all my problems coulda been solved had i bought that truck last year, fixed it up, rolled it around a while, stead i just hunkered down, let the seasons stroll in and out the creaky porch door as they please, as if i had a damn choice in the matter, well, stead i got a lady, a real lady, and she is very good to me, you know, she treats me right, cooks good and what have you, but i can’t help thinking about that truck, how i woulda painted her blue like that huge sky and polished her real smooth and it mighta taken me somewhere, maybe i’d be sat in her bed under that high sun eating a cold ham sandwich i bought at a truck stop, and the sandwich ain’t that good but it does the trick, you know, and i’d be sat in a truck all my own thinking about my mama, thinking bout maybe this is a good thing i got going on for me and wonder if she knows that, mama, if you’re out there, well, yes i’m doing swell, tell dad i say hello too and i love the both of you even though i don’t tell you enough or maybe at all, maybe i never have, but the whole time well, i meant to,
Poem before dying
no time tonight for a beer
at the bar after work
with my friends, no time
for poems, no bathroom breaks,
no time to find the perfect word,
no, rabid, that will have to do,
& why walk? it will take longer
& the store windows distract me
with their shiny clocks & old books
& candy apples cooling, better to drive,
better not to plan that trip,
we might be dead by then, hardly time
to write a will, hardly even time to say
i love you, which i do, by the way.
Lost Dog
My third escape begins with Chinese takeout. My man is inside picking up the food. We drive there together barking at each other the whole way. When he goes inside I get loose. I leave the car and bolt across the street to the strip mall. I work on instinct. I sniff for rocks to throw at the windows of the laundromat. Somewhere in here, my man still inside or maybe standing in the parking lot fuming at an empty car, arms full of Szechuan chicken, a cop comes up. Are you alright he asks, despite the obvious. He thinks a new pair of handcuffs can free me. Yes I am fine just a bad fight, though it is not even out of the regular cycle these days except my running away when I usually stay and moan like a dog. Just a bad fight, he repeats, Well okay. Do you need me to take you home? I pant No thanks I know my way. I limp back to the car like an injured dog. My man says Bitch, I sit, The chicken’s cold, I sit, I should have let you go. I stay.
Olivia Braley (she/her) is a mostly-poetry writer based in Washington, DC. She is the author of the chapbook “SOFTENING” (ELJ Editions) and co-founder of Stone of Madness Press. Her writing has been published in numerous journals and anthologies including The Southern Humanities Review, Hobart, Longleaf Review, trampset, and Thirty West Publishing House. You can reach her through her website, oliviabraleywrites.com.