……
Why Did You Do This to Me
…….(no honor amongst thieves)
There’s no balm for this sore throat screaming
booze poured out
suicide and Vicodin brushed off the table like breadcrumbs
but I’m on my knees and from the dust on the floor
perhaps I could construct a loaf
Musicality is a Trojan Horse
civility a farce for those more skilled at smiling
with friends they can depend upon
who wear straight hair in tight buns
and are counted when they enter the door
I run with stray dogs
and when rations are low
they turn their teeth on my flesh
and with rabid famished jaws they snap my bones
…..
This poem is from the chapbook Bar Fights with Sad Kids by Melina Cohen-Bramwell (Finishing Line Press), and is available at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/bar-fights-with-sad-kids-by-melina-cohen-bramwell/
Bar Fights with Sad Kids is a rollercoaster ride through a formative decade, covering topics such as #addiction, parental #divorce, and that pissy smell that pervades the city of San Francisco. If you remember what it felt like to be in your teens and early twenties, or how great it feels not to be in your teens and early twenties anymore, this book is for you. Grab your copy, brace your core, and make it out of the bar fight alive. #poetry
Melina Cohen-Bramwell dropped out of high school to join the circus but, as it soon became clear, was far better suited to a life of hermitage. Melina now communicates with the outside world primarily through scraps of paper covered in discarded lines that float out the window on breezy afternoons— and the occasional cohesive manuscript slipped in single pages under the door. If you wander about when the moon is high and the wind blows at just the right timbre, you might catch a glimpse of Melina darting in and out of the shadows in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The Paddock Review 