KFC
I lay in bed.
Brain rotting,
thumb dry-eraser scrolling,
escaping from everything
except my bed sheets,
and a man pops up on my screen.
And he asks me
“When was the fastest you’ve ever fallen in love?”
And it was an ad for KFC.
Though I was melting right off my bones, scorched until barely able to move,
I scrolled away faster
than I have ever scrolled before.
If I could run through the depths of the internet, Wreck it Ralph style,
to get away from that ad,
I would do super Mario backflips over firewalls
and Wikileak the billions of terabytes of content down a whirlpool void until I find
the place
where that man from the KFC ad thought
he had the right.
Phone screen turned to cracked egg yolk,
brain cornstarch-clumped,
I realize I exist under a heat lamp:
My turned-off bedroom light,
still warm from hours ago.
and there was I,
spinning
alone
eyes adjusting to the dark as
I try to focus on the lightbulb -
the one I project my daydreams onto, reaching for it like it won’t burn me
as it hums lullabies of each flavor of falling asleep,
or falling into other places
that always end up feeling like an overstayed welcome.
And you ask me how quickly I fall in love.
Honestly, ask me that question enough times and you could be next,
As long as you are a little more god than human.
As long as I remain nothing more than a thing that stares at you through a screen.
Though I put you on a pedestal,
I fall upwards just to be close to you-
I AM AVOIDANT
BUT I AM ALSO HUNGRY.
But also,
no one has ever asked me this before.
So I snatch my phone back from the depths,
and tell this man -
who is, by the way, NOT Colonel Sanders -
everything:
The fastest I have fallen in love is right now.
No, not with you,
Fuck you -
But it’s happening to me
like the indigestion your food gives me.
Heart clogged with the next person
who dares to let me look at them
and scroll through their heart,
pick out the parts that feel like
the smell of a home,
crash head first into their front door,
and fall in love even faster
from the concussion.
Dammit,
I fall in love so fast,
it becomes a secret neither of us have time to keep.
Fingers
slipping
around the combination lock.
I fall in love so fast,
because I know how much I want
the slow
that comes after and-
Hey.
No,
I know that look in your dead eyes,
Don’t fucking doubt me.
Don’t doubt that this is real.
Because this love,
this time,
will be everything.
It will be tender
It will be savory
It will be forever-satiating
It will be gluttonous and sizzling and back-for-seconds and honey buttered and -
In fact, you and your corporate fried chicken overlords
will be pleased to know
that this love
by all standards
will be absolutely
finger lickin’ good.
Pinball Machine Cortex
On my twenty-fifth birthday everything went dark.
The pinball machine in my brain
operated by two other pinball machines in my brain
started to power down, dings and flashes and crashes slowing
until my adolescence slow-blinked its way to the back of my mind.
The brain fully develops around the age of 25,
And when I blew out the candles I felt a small earthquake all around me.
All the mistakes I made were one thing,
But the ones I didn’t make
were another.
They all came crumbling down the sides of the walls like the last breaths of ghosts, whispering
the lessons I could have learned if I
was braver,
and I feel them for a moment, cradle all the timelines in my arms, as I let out
one last puff of air,
and as the smoke clears from the candles,
so does the regret
because there still is a pinball machine operated by two other pinball machines in my brain
and things are just as up to chance as they ever were.
I may not be as distracted by the flashing lights,
and I may run out of quarters before the day is even done,
but I’m still here,
living with the illusion of control
pressed underneath both of my thumbs.
Amy Argentar is a Chicago native who is willing to hear you out on your argument that thin crust is better than deep dish but will stop listening if you don’t at least acknowledge that deep dish is still in fact pizza. She is also willing to hear you out in general. Speak your truth. Her truth is that she is a Boston-based poet who can typically be found in the basement of the Cantab Lounge (where she is a host and volunteer staff) with a tequila soda in one hand and a plane ticket in the other. Formative experiences include doing academic decathlon for three years in high school despite not needing to, combining sour gummy Lifesavers with mini Oreos, owning a LeapFrog globe, and owning a hat from the Hoover Dam that said “This is my Dam Hat,” on it. Her first word was “hat,” and her last word will likely be something similarly profound. You can read Argentar’s work on her Instagram account @airplane_poems, where you can also find the link to order her chapbooks, All Burps Go to Heaven and Supposed To.
DIY MFA 