Ghosting Nadja by Steven Alvarez
One of the 12 winning poems from our poetry contest with the University of Arizona Poetry Center celebrating our centennial year! Stay tuned for more!
Ghosting Nadja
By Steven Alvarez
arrive Hotel Congress
& find sun-puddle chortled shiny
redheaded B. Wright sporting sandals
ask how many freckles
B. Wright sez millions
lifts shirt’s tail & her back—
sprinkled nutmeg ocotillo
B. Wright hands a hand-rolled
number tobacco hairs spilling
observe mechaniz’d javelina pursuing
Dillenger & B. Wright writes My
(desultory) book fails more & that word
you just used you imposing—you impose yrself
B. Wright brown coat fur-lined purple
buttons bedecked in the dark but no collar
& long wool skirt haunting reception
sey she loves the stairway & smells delightfully
rose & the almanac of the dead tattooed
on left forearm paper skin sprinkled
w. nutmeg B. Wright that night-blooming
cereus desert mariposa &—
& no don’t think look—
like Dillenger calling myself missed
Dillenger the Conque—
. . . humid American mind
& lupine supine desert chicory . . .
how much an epic? Fifty, fifty-five? Per square foot of course
. . . yea Tucson . . .
& dig this I wrote this for the ghost this darksome
ghost brittle brush brown her fuzzy
fluff grass hanging blown down
sprung desert mediocrity—& ghosted this text
B. Wright hands me a hand-rolled number
tobacco hairs spilling observe mechaniz’d javelina
pursuing Dillenger B. Wright writes My (desultory)
book fails more & that word you just used you imposing—
you impose yrself B. Wright you—actress breathing
B. Wright writes & B. Wright writes & that word imposing—
B. Wright speaks another sort maintain poet make me
desire to do the . . . of .A.E.TUSED
B. Wright where’d you get those little red shoes?
B. Wright write writing too oh yes write arrive
at Hotel Congress only to find sun-puddle chortled shiny
redheaded B. Wright sporting sandals ask
that ghost how many freckles & B. Wright sez
millions lifts shirt’s tail & sprinkled nutmeg ocotillo—
B. Wright sells Sonoran hotdogs at the ballpark
yea Tucson—B. Wright writes B.
Wright brown coat fur-lined, purple buttons
arrive Hotel Congress