Kellie Powell

 

Kellie Powell is a playwright currently living in Binghamton, New York. Her poetry has been published in ESC! Magazine, Word Riot, Pens

on Fire, Flask and Pen, Euphemism, Ugly Poets & Beautiful Poems, Poetry Cemetery, and Brome & Beyond. Her plays have been produced by Love Creek Productions, Art International Radio, the Know Theatre, Illinois State University Free Stage Festival, the Penny Dreadful Players, Studio Z, WHRW, and Hinman Production Company. Her short comedy "Reserved" is published by JAC Publishing & Promotions. Her non-fiction credits include the Feminist Review, After Ellen, and the Daily Vidette.

 

Kellie Powell's Website: These Aren't My Shoes Productions

 

SCORCH & GLORY

 

I want to smoke an impossibly cool cigarette

I want to breathe sophistication into my lungs

I want to suck in poison that will

destroy my goodness

my empathy

my weakness

my innocence

infect me with the cancer of apathy

with glorious arrogance

with ugly black truth

 

I want to light this cigarette

and savor the flavor of my downfall,

my undoing

 

and as I smoke it,

I will grow thinner

and thinner

flesh will fade away

until I'm size zero

and my impossibly thin face

is the color of ash

 

---

 

WAITING HER OUT

 

she only stopped crying

for a few seconds at a time

she could only take a few steps

before her knees

would give out under her

 

in the stairwell

again in the hallway

on the second floor

across from his door

she sank in hysterical sobs

 

I asked her what was wrong

but she couldn't answer me

I told her it would be all right

but she couldn't hear me

 

I sat for three hours

in the hallway

on the second floor

across from his door

and calmly stroked her head -

bald in patches

from where she had pulled out

fistfuls of hair

 

when I thought

she couldn't cry anymore

I dragged her

like a rag doll

through the snow

back to our room

put her in bed

and after she cried herself to sleep

I did the same

 

---

 

THE HANGOVER

 

Friday night I got drunk on tequila,

Saturday night I got wasted on you,

High from the way you kiss,

Mellow from the things you say,

Yours is the poison that sends me

Over the edge.

But alcohol wears off,

And you work in the morning,

And I'm coming down hard,

And I feel a little sick,

And I crawl into bed,

And I wake up hung over.

 

In the morning - actually, the afternoon - when I wake up

Sunlight hurts my eyes and I can't move

I lie there, re-living the night before more vividly than I'd like to

And I think about permanent damage -

I think about permanent anything

And I think you and I could make a lot of sense

Instead we take turns keeping each other at arm's length

Instead we take turns pushing each other away

And I think that sometimes love is like dry heaving

It hurts like hell, and it's fucking pointless.

 

Friday night I got drunk on tequila,

Saturday night I got wasted on you...

Yours is the poison that sends me

Over the edge.

 

---

 

PERSISTENT DELUSIONS

 

I dreamed there was a chance for us

A snowflake's chance in Hell

I dreamed I let you lie to me

I dreamed that you lied well

I dreamed you said you wanted me

I dreamed that I believed

I dreamed I knew the happiness

Of being so deceived

 

A dream is a lie that you tell yourself

When you cry yourself to sleep

A dream is all love's good for

When talk's so fucking cheap

After all this time,

Somehow you still floor me

So dreams are how I torture myself

When you won't do it for me

 

I dreamed there was a chance for us

I dreamed that you could care

And woke up kicking myself

Not surprised that you weren't there

My dreams are a cruel joke

But if you think they're fake

You should hear the lies I tell myself

While I'm awake

 

A dream is a lie that you tell yourself

When you cry yourself to sleep

A dream is all love's good for

When talk's so fucking cheap

After all this time,

Somehow you still floor me

So dreams are how I torture myself

When you won't do it for me

 

I dreamed there was a chance for us

A snowflake's chance in Hell

I dreamed I let you lie to me

I dreamed that you lied well

I dreamed you said you wanted me

I dreamed that I believed

I dreamed I knew the happiness

Of being so deceived