The Blues in Your Own Backyard

Love my onion rings,
Love me. Here they come,
Those big thirty-year-old feelings.
The rain on the holiday, the meat ruined on the grill.

Put the beer in the freezer to bring it up to speed.
Turn the radio on. Come lie in the sun, warm
In the certainty no teen ever makes it out
Alive from a Shangri-La's song.

Listen, the killer's childhood friend
Says he's brought the amazing Florida shit.
Come midnight, our luck will be visibly changed.
We'll put the flame to the punk and the punk to the fuse —

I'll never have sex in this town again.
So tonight, I'm flaming. The hottest thing
Evolving on wheels, and I'll be crashing all your barbecues
On my way to the stars.

Patricia Ferrell
Thirty Years War: Love Poems
2003 Paris Review Prize in Poetry
Zoo Press

Copyright © 2005 by Patricia Ferrell.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.

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