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concrete (after bill moran’s godsalt)

3.

concrete: “characterized by or belonging to immediate experience

of actual things or events.”

hi, i’m concrete.  sorry.    i’m a-concrete.   i’m ali-concrete.  okay,

i’m alicia, i’m mattress top.      i’m matter, this matters-matters,

i’m watching a film of a film,   and i’m the conman

conning you out of knowing what you want when you want it.

sorry-   let me turn myself into concrete,   let me-   concentrate.

con-concrete   control myself-   let me start over:

2.

i’m in the front seat when i should be in the back.
i’m living on purpose. i’m living despite my-concrete.

my friend tells me my hair matches the stop light

and keeps on driving.

my eyes are traffic lights and the traffic.

i lick the liquor store off of my lips and thank god,

for the first time in five years,

that i am broken.

i tell my friend that he needs to break, he says “you break it, you buy it”

and i break like a habit, like an inconvenience, i can cheat my way out of anything, make room in store aisles, in line, always cheat myself, walking inside the con-con   convenience store,   i overhear someone say that

they don’t like the dark – no one does.”

1.

and, suddenly, i’m sitting in the dark, on screen, listening to my boyfriend fuck his girlfriend, and the girlfriend isn’t me, and i should be okay with sharing, really, sharing space, but the space is so limited, (con-con-con convenience (convenience stores, under microscope, open 24-hours, (don’t look at me, i’m not here, (sheets cover me like convenience, (co-ins, i’ll pay with this body (pardon my concrete, concrete, con-contradiction, (i’m asking you to keep the change. 

0.

hi, a confession,   i’m changing my tone,    pressing hands in wet concrete, and everyone i love turns into concrete, and

(why do they have to do that?

(what-why do I have to mold them, walking contradictions

(and am left to conserve nothing but concrete and concrete

and concrete into concrete into concrete,

(and sink into cheap wine and time,

(and i close my eyes for a moment, like a restless driver, in the wrong lane, (carving out time for them to carve into me?

(i can’t say my name but i can spell it in concrete.

the word ‘I’ bonds this body to itself and hardens over time.

talking feels a lot like listening. and listening  feels a lot like learning. and learning feels a lot like concrete that I can’t push through unless i’m already sunk-                                                                                                        sorry.  


Alicia Turner holds an MA in English and is a grant writer & storyteller. She can be found writing confessional, conversational poetry in an over-priced apartment somewhere in WV. Her work is featured or forthcoming in Four Lines (4lines), CTD’s ‘Pen-2-Paper’ projectFreezeRay PoetryDrunk MonkeysLuna LunaDefunkt Magazineépoque pressSpace City Underground MagazineThe Daily Drunk, Sybil JournalExPat PressRejection Letters PressScreen Door ReviewJ Journal Literary MagazineSledgehammer LitTaint Taint Taint Magazine, among others.

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