Skinny Bones

You’re number one with a bullet to the brain in the place
below the chin James Wright wished he could sing of.

Remember telling me you felt like dying? What a date!

I’m stealing. I’m still reeling from love coming on strong and love
disappearing. Love is a ghost this year.

Next year my Co-Star app says it’ll keep hurting still.
So here we are, and here I go again with my spatchcocked heart.

Gimme that operatic country. Gimme those rusty tunes.
Gimme that gospel come from a burning throat.

When the stars call my name I’m down on my knees in a field waiting
with my tongue out to catch them calling, catch them falling.

If on anyone, why not me?

I am 99% sure Hannah Gadsby would love me
if we got the chance to lock eyes, to stare from below eyelashes.

If she saw the dip in my wrist where my lips fit perfectly,
I wouldn’t think anymore about the divot in yours

where you’d line up cocaine like a trough. When you bend down
to your own supplicant hand, the stars in the room fill you for a minute.

One minute and one minute more.

Trenna Sharpe grew up in Tennessee. She lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in WMN.Zine, Homology, Five:2:One Mag, The Tangerine, and others. She graduated with an MFA in Poetry from UMass Amherst. She's currently working on a series of poems addressed to the comedian Hannah Gadsby.