Three Poems by Cassandra Dallett

Found a Pawn Slip

for the diamond

I bought you.
How much more fun
it was
on the way up,
then this extended
fall.

Drove past you just now

on the street
recognizing
piece by piece
the clothes I’d given you
black Pea coat
black Jordan’s
black hat
too late
with a flash of reddish brown cheek
my horn was slow
the pavement slick.
And me
pen moving blindly across a notebook
in my lap,

Now I’m texting while driving

feel I need to say
look
it’s not all
your fault
I’m the loser
that picked you out.
who’s cooking dinner,
and picking up the kids?
Did you find an apartment?

At a red light

I notice graffiti
it says “follow your”
with the symbol of heart
“Shiiiit, that’s how I got lost!”

The Funny Thing is

I thought about hugging you this morning

how your stocky body fills my arms
and that maybe if I squeezed hard
you’d be
ok.

Just ok

just not broken anymore
an aching abandoned boy
bones shifting around unhappily
under all that muscle
all that sunshine I used to call your skin
it does light a room
but maybe that was hunger
illuminating your man shell
wiser women would have run
but I wanted to touch it
feel the warmth of your pliable insides
all those guts your mother twisted up
mixing your batter till your idealism and revulsion for woman
was all syrupy like regurgitated Robotussin
burning on the way out
but sweet I mean Damn!
most of us are ridiculous enough to enjoy adoration
we just never understand the price of it
I was your pop star dirtying my reluctant pedestal
you sticking cameras in my face
tripping me up with questions
and broadcasting my failures all over the place
I didn’t want to be part of it
your slippery image
one minute your “good girl”
the next minute “a loose woman”
I see now how you were turned to an object
a babysitter masturbating on you
a mother who threw you away
I get it how
you need to fuck on top
so as not to suffocate
I do too
for the same crushed down reasons.

The Spook Inside

PLEASE STAY AWAY!

I say this is for your own good.

I am cold

enough
to break you
over the recycle bin.

In bed I will wrap myself in sheets of ice.

Build walls with my back
a door slamming, foot pounder, I live in the walls.

In the car you press my nerves

You are loud sound ridiculous
can’t see we are hurtling towards
my past, an ex
a person who represents what you have now become
this is his turf
and you too, are about to be a foot note
but you can’t hear it over your own voice.

We’ve had fun playing house.

Now we play in the funhouse.
Our reflections, distorted red paint smiles,
can see the accident up ahead.

It was in the cards

I only have two good weeks a month,
the other two something wicked inside
leaks out on my wet tongue.

In the movie we watched last night

The Doctor’s secretary said this-
“A ghost is an emotion bent out of shape,
condemned to repeat itself time and time again.”

And there I was,

needy and naked on the screen,
a broken-burnt thing haunting the closets of children.

Cassandra Dallett occupies Oakland, CA. Cassandra writes of a counter culture childhood in Vermont and her ongoing adolescence in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has published in Slip Stream, Sparkle and Blink, Hip Mama, The Chiron Review, Bleed Me A River, Ascent Aspirations, Criminal Class Review, Enizagam, The Delinquent and The Milvia Street Journal among many others. Look for links and chapbooks on cassandradallett.com