Callie Garnett

3 Poems

Occupational Therapy

I’ve been having trouble

Holding my phone

It hurts

Heat is good

That’s why the gun is warm

Faint lemon

Scent on the Sabbath

Lyn drags cool

Jergens on me w/ the

Wand she used on others (jerk-offs)

All of us softening up

Me Lyn Jamie the Barber at

East River Occupational Therapy

Resting our mitts on standard issue

writing desks & Shitting on Ringo

Whatever, it was an infection

I picture you out west, polyamorous but

Tight about it

Wise & kind of sausage like Ringo

Small in such a big car

Jostling on the trax

Or when dancing, spazzing

to jukebox

Bop as if on puppet

Strings of Galouix. Is it true We have

Like 2 dance moves: Pretending

Not to be filled w/ hate & asking

Big-eyed for a coin

& this other thing. I’ll think of a better word

I get Moose Trax

[ingredients: list]

I want to throw the plate

That scatters Magic Beans when it

Fucking breaks

You climb down the stalk w/ your

Finger still in the ring-pull of the

Backdrop it was…

Backdrop, that’s the word (?)

Something like a fixed market value but it

Can change; change is

Like X-ray or infra-red (X) happens

But nothing happens, you said

I tried to walk & also stay softened up

I strung the string between two cups

You called, I continued walking

It was you said like nothing

Happened, he

Recoiled splitting the kingdom

Reminding you of life

“A darkness of midday light

Passed over my eyes”

That’s me in the porno

Me in the bubble, in the box

He imagined & I

Listen like I’m

In the green room of your visits to him &

Him. Ultrasound

Doesn’t only image

It also softens up the afflicted tissue

Ringo was bad / Ringo was good

“Ringo was there

& he had the right look,” said the barber

“he had the right hair, he was real, everything…

​

​

​

The Abundance

​

I come from a long line of

Fish-hatchery specialists

& as a result really haven’t

In private

Nurtured my true worth the soul felt

Gazing out at brook trout pools / bowfin pens

When I do

It rolls out, myself

I become a shameless name-dropper

Concerning what I feel I’ve bought w/ sight

Say, matching the young turtles to adults

This morning,

optimizing my copy

For search engine I thought

You shd be in the keywords

For see how they find our hatchling way

To the keywords, the abundance

For example “examples of misdemeanors”

For “Los Angeles”

For “Cost of living”

For “Why didn’t she speak up yesterday”

“Why did she lie at the end”

“Why did she lie at the end of green inferno”

For “buy you off meaning”

Time

They will question thee, the citizenry

Concerning what they should spend, say

​

​

​

​

Soylent II

​

Something so jizzy about the first

Blossoms of clam-bake season

What a waste, Dusk.

He hit the footlamps & we

Boarded the teacups

Wharfside

Me in my oxblood boots.

I can be quite

Dressed at Night

When Alan switches to solid foods.

The sky in its infinite

Lift ladeled down

A skinned rosehip

Touched my knee w/ Sea spray

Lights lateral whipped

Keep your limbs inside &

I think I flicked a firefly arranging its carapace off me

I tell you Dandelion seeds

Torpedo like we span, Spun.

& slowed, last brays

Of female orgasm as sung by Richard Pryor…

Then I became as a Large Murex

Wobbling on a boardwalk

Sno cone stain

& took the off-tray position

To talk on the big

White phone.

Pomegranates

Or grenades

It can be translated

I forget the rest

Of the consolation…

But on the book of Conflict,

Alan had written

Don’t you worry

Hug the earth discreetly

Dissolve far off in yr worst fate, either way

Summer / is halved / like a tomato

…

Its juice / runs through

Its juice / running / through the streets

The wind won’t take

Alan’s flimsy salad.

It’s as if the food wants to be eaten

​_________________________________________________________

Callie Garnett

What are 2 - 3 books (regardless of genre) that you've read over the last year or less that really blew your hair back? ​

Bridget Talone's The Soft Life

Andrea Lawlor's Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl