TWO POEMS by Kendra DeColo

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Ode to When the Music Video Doesn’t Match the Song 

            After Ryan Burton and Noah Taitano

What isn’t lovely 

about a group of men 

moshing to a slow song

whose notes drip

around their bodies

like a halo of sweat

the way I drive through

suburbia blasting Beethoven’s

6th in a silver Honda as each traffic light

closes its fist and I must stop

between Panera’s

and Elder’s Bookshop

where a friend’s brother

used to sell stolen goods to buy 

heroin and the owner was hip

to the scheme would give him

just enough for the merchandise

lifted from a rich friend’s house

and if that is a kind of mercy

then it is also a mercy

when my husband says

“why don’t you take some time for you”

meaning “you need to go take care of your shit”

because I have that look in my eye

that says I need to be far away from people

including/especially my own family

I need to wear my heaviest coat

and skulk in the cold 

pretending I’m a person

who has the luxury of such things  

as solitude and avoiding eye contact

I make my own sanctuary

I listen to “The Wind Cries Mary”

while actual wind 

tosses a plastic bag down the middle of the street

following me two whole blocks  

and I don’t believe in angels

but if I did it would be one

foolish or bored

enough to do nothing

but play pranks

I would believe in the angel

who is out of mercy 

and only wants to mess  

with us into a silly kind of mirth

while god isn’t looking

who says: who are you

to be this sad 

and slow-dances

with us to the roughest anthem 

under a street light

that sputters in time

with our two-step

before it burns out

 

I Could Write a Poem about Electric Scooters


the ones self-described disruptors 
created and left scattered 

in the touristy districts 
of Nashville— which is to say white—

which is to say I don’t know 
how to travel and not be grotesque 

as the blonde bachelorette parties 
on their booze wagons that leave me breathless—

the desire to sprawl and achieve
just like Jesus himself who must have said 

thou shalt fuck 
over thy neighbor if it makes a profit—

I could write the scooters are lime green
and today I saw a woman riding one

in a tattered wedding dress    
she found in Good Will— the kind of slip 

I was never tough enough to wear 
but envied the girls who could, the ones 

who channeled Kathleen Hannah 
and Courtney Love and gave  

blow jobs behind the bleachers—Oh 
to be at home like that in my own body—

to be in the world like a tech   
entrepreneur and possess so little

consideration for the world  
I can glide right through it

like the frat boy who bought 
the historical home next door  

and turned it into a bicycle shop
who also rides a red pick-up    

with a sticker of an AR-15 that says
“come and take it”

which is another way of saying
“who’s going to stop me”

which is the smirk of Kavanaugh
which is the smirk of a every man  

who’s been stockpiling
alibis since he was 17— 

thou shall not—
fuck sustainability

I want to be the girl  
burning down this street at rush hour,

dress like the iridescence 
of an oil-soaked wing—

“come and get this pussy”
written on her forehead 

in blood  
ready to take down

the motherfucker
who tries to grab her next.

 

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