Cort worked with me on the Mule for years. He and Helen Losse kept me going, encouraged me, during a fabulous time of collaboration and celebration of authors — poets, essayists, novelists and so much more. His presence in my life, as well as the Dead Mule, represents the best of the best times. Thank you, Cort, for being here with me/us. You’re a good friend.
Bledsoe received a Bachelor’s in Arts with a focus in Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas in 2005. While there, he worked as an editor for Exposure: the University of Arkansas’ Literary and Visual Arts Journal (now defunct). He received a Master’s of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Hollins University in 2008 and worked as an assistant poetry editor, and later assistant editor, for the Hollins Critic. While at Hollins, he cofounded Ghoti Magazine and was head editor until the journal ceased publication in 2010.
Bledsoe has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize ten times, Best of the Net twice, and won the Blue Collar Review’s Working People’s Poetry Contest in 2004. For a list of Bledsoe’s publications, see Amazon right here. Pretty amazing, eh?
*psssssst, there’s always an Arkansas connection, y’all.
Raining Apples
Apples
Is any fruit more dangerous? Eve
blamed for her childlike optimism
for millennia. She just wanted
to share her new find with the man
who was supposed to be her helpmeet.
Cast out of opulence and punished
by being paid 80 cents for every dollar.
She was just trying to keep the doctor
away. Ask any pig at a luau. Snow
White with her stepmother. How much
of our lives controlled by the Apple?
Our phones. Our TVs. We watch
Apple and talk to it. It guides us.
Has anyone thought to go back
to poor Eve and say thank you?
We were wrong to blame you.
The first to rebel against authoritarian
control. We should’ve listened.
A Fox Is a Wolf Who Sends Flowers
And chocolates, forgetting about your
allergies. Tree nuts and shellfish, also.
And don’t get me started on lingerie. Drafts
near the big window. Voyeurs outside. A fox
is a wolf, and all wolves are boys the way
all cats are girls. Until they’re not. Until
they lie, steal the hen’s eggs, cross the wrong
street late at night. So much is stolen from us.
Like my time, which is worth as much as
anyone’s. And my heart, which is worth
as much as anyone’s.
For H.
You listen to the same dozen or so
songs and wonder why you don’t like
anything. But it’s time to go to a meeting.
Some of the bands, you opened for or
at least saw live twenty years ago.
You take pages from the Bible, other
old books and do erasures while waiting
for the executives to file in to the boardroom.
You are less than an animal to them.
Which doesn’t mean they don’t smile
and learn your name. They need it
to complain with. There’s nothing sexy
about making due. Maybe you fart
before anyone comes in. Maybe
you take all the water you can carry
and call that a win. At least they’re not
yelling at you when they yell. You
aren’t worth yelling at, to them. We
hired a guy for our team a few months
back. After a couple weeks, he stopped
wearing khakis in favor of pajama pants.
He’d wander the halls and dart around
a corner if he saw one of us. After about
a month, they told him to clear out
his desk and go across the street, where
they fired him. They said they had him
on tape stealing lunches
from the 8th floor break room, the one
with all the lawyers. I’ll never be
the poet he was.
Idols of the Cave
Wake early and get her dressed for camp.
No lunch for me so I don’t put on weight.
Doctor’s appointment in the afternoon
so I can maybe sleep again. Spaghetti
for dinner when she’s back. You can live
a life in a week, but dying lasts forever.
If humans vanished the last remnant
would be a footprint on the moon. But
good luck getting her to love you back.
I need a xenobot to clean my brain.
I’ll name him Tony and buy him a French
maid’s outfit. Maybe I just need to scrub
harder. Until you can see the blood through
the skin. Camus was forever burning
his biscuits, and all his walls fell down.
Life is so disappointing. But not today.
No one cares if you die, so no one cares
if you live. Practice your music. Write
your poems.
My Plan
The man with the lampshade
on his head didn’t think I was
very funny. I tried to explain,
using the sign language
of the sparrows, but he only
understood the dialect of
the black squirrel, and my
tail twitches were rusty. He
had given me a choice on how
I would like to die, and I’d,
of course, said cake. It was
either slowly and angrily
or slowly and angrily with
a foot cramp. I couldn’t
find my ankles to stand
or I would’ve made a speech
about running away. I think
someone stole them or borrowed
them and forgot to bring
them back. What I wanted
to do was learn the word
for stream, the way the water
glinted in the sun as it passed
out of my life to be
enveloped in the equilibrium
of swimming and falling forever
but never landing, but my bass
was worse than my black
squirrel. Back home, I’m sure
they’re praying for me to fail.
The joke’s on them; that
was my plan all along.
Neighbors
As I climbed the stairs to my apartment
last night, a little boy called out in a soft
voice to stop me. I didn’t recognize him,
but he said he lived below me. Where I live,
many of the apartments have multiple
families in them, some of whom cycle
through. The people I’d seen moving in,
for example, I hadn’t seen in months. He
asked how late it was okay to listen
to music. He said his brother wanted to.
I wasn’t sure how to answer or why
he would even ask. Politeness of that type
is so rare. I said, what time do you usually
listen, because that seems to work out
well. I can have a strange schedule, myself,
and don’t expect others to adhere to it.
When he shook his head, I said what about
9 or 10? That seems like a reasonable time.
There are a lot of kids where I live, which
is why I moved here with my daughter,
and though it’s very noisy, everything
shuts down around 9. He was happy,
as though he expected an earlier time.
Do you hear my music? I asked. He
was surprised to consider that I might listen
to music, I guess, and I had to repeat it. No,
he finally said, and added, almost
as an apology, only sometimes in the morning.
Pick Up
In the parking lot, I got lost
looking for a way through
the snow drifts. My pants
and shirt, the sky and snow
all grew while I thought
about how much I missed
Chicken Dinner bars, Nickle
Naks, Squeeze Pops. If I’m
to die here, at least I want
to go out twitching. Off
in the distance, I heard a woman
calling out for Mallomars. Not
today, Satan. The sun was
somewhere playing cards with
the night, which always cheats.
I felt so small, I was in danger
of being crushed by the pizza
already cooling in my hands.
I decided to use the box like
a sled, the Crazy Bread to pole
me along. Somewhere under
all this dirty whiteness, there
was a way home. I just had
to be careful not to take a wrong
turn and end up on a cloud,
strumming a lute to the naked
babies. Today was supposed
to be the warmest day of the year,
on track to be a record. Maybe
they’re filming a movie. Birds
still perched on light poles
that poked through. I couldn’t
help but see something
resembling bemusement in
the way they circled to find
cars to loose their bowels upon.
Poor
I was always afraid to go in restaurants
when I was a kid, that they’d smell
the poor on me, know, somehow, how I
lived and judge it unworthy. It wasn’t my
choice, after all, to be unwanted and trapped.
When I go back now, dressed nicer than
a funeral just to walk around, they ask
where I’m from and I say next door.
I make more money than my father did,
but where I moved, I’m just another kind
of poor. It’s a stain that doesn’t wash off.
Purple
There is an open book I’m too tired to read.
There is a comic book we read together.
Flames in the kitchen when all I wanted was oatmeal.
Flames in your eyes when you want to stay.
Purple is the color of royalty and pain.
I have nothing but time to keep me company.
I dreamed of my brother last night. He tried
to ask me how I’m doing. The whole
time I kept reminding him he’s dead.
Let’s lie on the couch and play video games
no one can win. Eventually, our thumbs
will get too sore to continue. Let’s order
takeout that costs too much. I can have
oatmeal the rest of the week.
The Capitalists
Maybe there was snow, covering
the road, so only teeth marks remained.
Maybe a knife stabbed along the sidewalk
to hold on. My bones aching. Teeth
in the side of the morning. Someone
call the police, my heart was robbed.
All of my feelings had a table read,
and you’ve been recast. Your socks
remain, but my feet are so cold. When
I find my hat, you’ll think of Van Gogh
eating an apple. In the Old Testament,
it wasn’t enough to be afraid. You had
to tell everyone about it. There are scars
made by words, made by thoughts.
The snow never makes plans, it just falls.
where it wants. If I could be more like it,
maybe I wouldn’t be so cold. Or maybe
it’s a question of who can accumulate
the best. Maybe the capitalists had
it right all along.
Raining
It’s rained all week, and I feel mildewed
and unavailable for questions, thanks.
This poet sends me self-flagellation
with requests for feedback. She wants
to make sure no one else feels the way
about her that she does, just like every
one else. The thing about suicidal friends
is we mostly just want to sit quietly
and maybe have snacks. Yesterday,
I needed to go to the store, but by the time
I got to my car, I was soaked and the rain
had stopped so I went back inside. Every
evening, I’ve had to go somewhere
and save someone’s life. This weekend,
it’s supposed to be warm. I’m looking
forward to staying in.
