Jennifer Faylor
CONVERSATIONS OVERHEARD IN A BOWLING ALLEY WHEN THERE IS A CITY WIDE POWER OUTAGE

My childhood sweetheart left me because I am an ancient jar of honey,
forgotten about but still sweetening in a cool dark place,
a thousand furious bees having loved me into existence.

My mama let strangers hide under my bed, then fed them
in the morning; cold coconut soup, her specialty.

Well, the day of my birth my pop was no where to be found,
and legend has it he was hunting down a local villain,
it’s that or he was on a park bench with a handful of breadcrumbs,
conducting interviews with a sampling of the pigeon population.

I’d like to learn the language of god, so I can chat
at night when everyone else has gone to sleep. The hardest part
is that I don’t think god uses an alphabet.

I hurt a guy bad once, I broke a guy’s heart.
Now, he sings to his furniture. Operetta to the ottoman,
and sad country songs to the four poster bed.

I just bought some land, want to build the perfect house–
one with big heartache closets,
that I can hide in when I’m blue, and skylights,
skylights everywhere, so that when the power’s out like this,
we’ll have enough starlight to play monopoly.

Jennifer Faylor is a poet and chocolatier who lives in New York City with her goldfish Edison and Marguerite. She has her MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. She’s been published in such places as Redivider, Bat City Review, and Straylight. Her chapbook The Case of the Missing Lover is published by Dancing Girl Press.

Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Issue #3.