THE WRITING DEAD 2024 by Isadora Gruye

This town is lousy with writer men.
They used to worship Bukowski.
Now they want to be Bourdain,
stumbling out of bars, tongues twisting
over lines of dead prose.
Imaginary camera crew broadcasting
straight to an adoring audience.

Onwards and upwards boys.
Take your hyperbole
and bushy eyebrows elsewhere.
Pack up and leave town
with your stubby, flaccid sentences
trailing behind you unimpressively.

Don’t forget to write
‘Wish you were here’
on water-stained post cards
and send them to your aunties in St. Paul,
so that the city mail boxes overflow
with your lifeless vows.

But, before you go,
drop your stories on my doorstep.
I’ll take them in, feed them milk and whiskey.
They will grow up hairy and strong.
One day, they will march out my front door
with your picture clasped in their hands.

They’ll karaoke in midnight streets
until their sing-song drowns out
jet planes flying overhead.
They’ll take selfies in the every dark alley
and run their palms across every bus bench,
lamp post, and bar stool
until their dander coats this city in glassy ash
that sparkles on the sidewalk.

 

Isadora Gruye (she/her) is a writer and photographer living in Minnesota, USA. She believes in cartographers and beekeepers but has little need for maps or honey. Her work has appeared in many places in the tactile and virtual world. Her first poetry collection “The Ladies’ Guide to the Apocalypse” was published in 2019, and her second collection “Doomsday Heart Brings Her Dream Journal to the Book Burning” was part of the Ghost City Press summer series.