A Poem By Alex Dimitrov

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Lindsay Lohan

It’s a cold rehearsal before we all drive off.
The ride out is mindless and short on goodbyes.
And in the flurry of parties she lost her passport.
A slow smoke, a think in the old car…
how they moved through their places and phrases
and onto the bedroom where mostly we kept it all in.
People won’t tell you, but if you lose enough things you do become something.
All day the water endlessly filters so it’s not the same pool.
In the morning our photos looked darker than us
and the subject we were was a gamble (I know).
The night winds came through and the gin took it well.
Voyeur. Soho House. No one told us about us.
I don’t remember, but you wanted me happy or loose like your change?
Because it’s not written here or it’s not written well
and the boys flitted out of the Aero like men do.
From one to two I saw three. No mistake. Nothing but bones and some flesh.
And then you. They said you sped through those hills and would not stop.
They said you had nothing to say in Marina del Rey.
Reno — Monroe — 1960. I forget his name, Perce’s name.
I know all these lines, John. I promise you I do. Yes, baby, we know that.
And Cook, presumably speaking to Huston, said kindly on the recorder:
“We must have 86,000 feet of sound film by now.”
So tonight, we’d like to invite only you to this soft light.
It could be your first time, it could be a waste.
Her arm was full of bracelets, one of which, she said, had been given to her by S.
And sometimes I think: I’m at this dinner forever.
It’s like home. I don’t leave without paying something.
How they wrote about you, how you showed your tattoos,
how everyone had grown tired but they were tired without you.
It was late on some coast where you walked and for now it was quiet.
The gulls couldn’t tell what we were so they stared. They kept watching.
Pretend otherwise but we just couldn’t stop.

Alex Dimitrov’s project Night Call is forthcoming. He is the author of Begging for It (Four Way Books, 2013) and American Boys (Floating Wolf Quarterly, 2012).

You will find more poems here. You may contact the editor at [email protected].