Amber Ridenour Walker


Breathless

            (for Jean Seberg)

If you love a girl just maybe
you shouldn’t steal a car

for her. It’s bad manners &
just what am I supposed to do with this?

Like maybe I will take it for a spin
while I slick on some lipstick,

plotting my next move
like a femme fatale,

inscrutable in fishnet
stockings or some various

casting-call bullshit. Oh,
isn’t this poetic. Here’s me,

tracing my own lips
over your corpse, pretending

I don’t know you just called me
a bitch in your own language.

Still, I like the compliment,
turning it in my hands

like your scribbled manifestos
that I should have thrown away.

I never told you that. Maybe
there’s a lot those movies do not tell you

about girls like me. Or just maybe
you should have been a better car thief.


Work

I work in a clown school
I work in an atmosphere of phosphorescence

I work under pressure

my work is governed by the Uncertainty Principle
and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, so

I can affect things but I must be careful
not to break them forever

I work in an anapest school
I work in an eternity bubble

I work in contradictions

but no really
I do not

I work in a house place
I work for false impressions

I labor under a lot of weird assumptions

such as:
It will all be worth it,

un-cashable checks
that burn like money

in a brand-new pocket


Amber Ridenour Walker                            

Amber Ridenour Walker’s work has appeared in 20 Minutes in Portland: A Special Edition of The Portland Review; Word Riot; elimae; ALARM Magazine; Fast Forward, 580 Split, and most recently, Tiny Spoon and The Corvus Review (forthcoming). Two of her chapbooks, Autobiographical Alley Map and Smithereens, were published through Nightbomb Press, and she edited The Nightbomb Review from 2008-2012. She holds an MFA from The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and currently lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where she works as a hairdresser.

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