Juliet Gelfman-Randazzo
Sentences
after Bernadette Mayer
i walked around the cemetery i walked back over the bridge and back back over the bridge
i walked forgetting the proper direction i was meaning to go i bridged myself
walking cemetarylike and over and over and over my landlord called
to put the heat in the heat i bridged so cemetery on the phone i walked myself
backwards from saying the thing to the landlord i locked the door the landlord
left the door unlocked forgetting the proper direction i was mean
i mean i was nice i abridged myself on the phone over and over i didn’t say the thing
my landlord turned the heat on i locked my door hotly so proper so phony my landlord explained
the workers were there to install the heat i walked around while he said this thing this thing back
back he said they had to leave i held the phone heat called door back over i sedentary heat forgot
and then the cops drove by he said he said they saw the workers had a ladder he said
the thing i said the thing they didn’t lock the door they turned left over
and over the heat was off i walked i forgot he said
the cops said they needed the workers’ ladder to get a cat down from a roof around the corner
around a cemetery a cat on a bridge the ladder or the former or the landlord on the phone
another installation they sawed something they didn’t they bridged something some heat
and i was meaning to text you the landlord said i said some thing around and around a roof
i said i said i didn’t say i walked i meant i was meaning i needed i was working i was needing to work
i didn’t look over the bridge cattily i didn’t say some thing i could have said
i heated my dinner the heat was on the fire alarm went off i locked it away
i walked a ladder to a roof i mean over and over the bridge the proper direction
i held the cemetery i locked the phone
i didn’t say some thing so i wouldn’t have to explain myself later
not strike poem
well i’m not walking around the not campus center real body canted a little left
right not turning not yet not stretching my real legs socked in socks that don’t
say the name of the not institution that is really not agreeing to justified demands that they
really do have the means to fulfill rather than say funding boys hurling not balls
rather my real body is adjusting peacefully no pacefully stop that autocorrecting
me not administration not institution not my computer strike a line thru
that line strike a drum a cowbell no i’m not on any sort of line i’m in my living room
practicing walking in little oblong eggy circles tomorrow no tomorrow no tomorrow
i’ll hoist some sign not like a pencil in a fist no really someone will not snap
a photo someone will not eat a veggie sandwich three slices of bread not the veggie sandwich
with the onions in it not the floppy swatch of cheese not the bread so soaked in
mayonnaise my fingers turn real gooey pick something up a glass of water on my coffee
table a hat bearing the real name of the administration who really it’s so
simple after all should just pay real money to real people for real work
but i wouldn’t write a strike poem no this is not that this is me pacing about my living room
the table shaped like kidney bean really from facebook marketplace really i paid real money
for it money i made thru working really my shirt will not be red my friends will not be there
someone will sign some real paper or maybe it’s virtual the paper computer what do you think
chat gpt here’s one for you how much is a real life’s living worth no never mind
i didn’t ask that not question i’ll not be there not on the sidelines not chanting some
slant rhyme i wrote that i don’t have to keep reminding real me is not a poem
Juliet Gelfman-Randazzo is a recent graduate of the Rutgers University-Camden MFA program, where she wrote about deer, hand models, and trees. She is the author of the chapbook "DUH" (Bullshit Lit) and her work appears in The Cleveland Review of Books, Bedfellows Magazine, Passages North, and Annulet: A Journal of Poetics, among others. Juliet lives in Philadelphia, where she runs the reading and open mic series Spit Poetry. She can be followed @tall.spy (Instagram) and @tall__spy (Twitter) but she can never be caught.