At Chelsea’s
And now me and Zac are starting the fire out back for everyone:
I have his flashlight app
and we hear death screams from within the house
and party music, a LAN party playlist playing,
but where’s Chelsea
and where’s my beer, where’s Warhol’s tombstone, fucked,
where is my SSD that Rob gave me with all my shit saved on it, broke,
and where the fuck is Jodorowsky right now
right
this fucking
second? I seek something clearer, “on the verge of tears.”
Hannah (?) says Zac and I look
epic in our new riot gear, and I’ve still got
his flashlight wrapped around my fist, full of pride.
In the antechamber, a rotating filter of phantasm ooze
zumbas outside the only bathroom in the whole neighborhood,
flickering voodoo masks winking and grinning and laughing and
cursing. Touch one, and you’ll be sent back to the first area…
I drink for them now and I drink to this as well.
Later:
All my friends ask if I need a ride back east
but I decline
and recline
back into this sofa
spilling shit all over myself,
mourning something stupid and “transgressive,”
cramped underneath old yearbook photos
of Chelsea beaming on the wall.
Crystalized, kind of blue,
etc, etc.
A Profound Valor
“I’m reduced to 15-year-old fisticuffs now versus
Mom’s hoary lodger, crabstick-skinned
Steven Howard Junior, over cable charges, over
Something called ‘Eat My Hot Bavarian Log.’
He says he never watched it, calls my mom
A parody of her former self.
I swear to the RNG gods I’ll
Knock his fucking block off
For lying to my poor mother.
I mean, shit, we’re
Practically the same
Height.”
Nilson Thomas Carroll studied playwriting and sculpture at SUNY Oswego where he earned a BA in English (creative writing). He is currently working toward an MFA at the Visual Studies Workshop through SUNY Brockport.