Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Cover Charge. By Linda Kleinbub


 Broken souls gather
buy the two-drink minimum,
look for romantic remedies.

Your advice was
Don’t write about life
write about art.

I say, Paint me black
splatter your pigment
on my wedding dress.

You’re a beer-soaked barroom,
I’m an engagement ring
lost on the floor.

We Fred Astaire tap dance
in the curb’s holy water.
Your kisses were jewels,
dope bought on the Lower East Side.

We crawl out of abandoned squats,
you say you speak fiction-
your heart is exposed,
I tell true stories,
you are forewarned.





Photo by Arthur Kaye

Linda Kleinbub is the host of the monthly Fahrenheit Open Mic, the founder of Pen Pal Poets and the curator of a summer reading series at 6BC Community Garden. She received her MFA from The New School. Some of her work has appeared in The New York Observer, The Brooklyn Rail, The Best American Poetry Blog, Yahoo! Beauty, First Literary Review-East, and multiple anthologies. Her first full-length book of poetry is forthcoming from A Gathering of Tribes Press / A Fly by Night Press. 

5 comments:

  1. I love this poem,Linda! Delivered with such a cool rawness! I especially loved your closing stanza. Well done!

    -pRince A. McNally

    ReplyDelete
  2. So well done! I thought i was reading from the book "Greatest Poems Ever"

    ReplyDelete
  3. Beautiful Linda! visceral, visual and heartfelt

    ReplyDelete
  4. but is it a Mac thing or what ??? I am missing all the letter Ys in your poem

    ReplyDelete

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