Bitch Session Heidi Lynn Staples Poetry

local_library Bitch Session

by Heidi Lynn Staples

Published in Issue No. 106 ~ March, 2006

I was sitting in the livingroom chatting with you, in the firelight,

Reading, on the couch, on a rant, chatting, but it was you

In the living-room, chatting in the firelight and ranting, at it,

O, at no one in particular, at no one — O,

It was no one in particular in the livingroom chatting and ranting

In the firelight, like you, ranting in the living-room, in the firelight,

December icing over the windows and then the streets —

Making them slip-up dangerous, no one

Braving the out there in the dark, everything gone

Numb hard mean dumb. Yes, the same way you lie in bed all day,

Ranting, the firelight on the past, the lovers piled so high

Girls, you could smell the cum still on the sheets,

In the firelight, ranting. These are the shrouds

You’ve enraptured me with, these eventual hurts,

The call is loss, and all meaning are rats. Growling low

And making her chain clink, I know the way sister is. She’s been known

To leap from a speeding truck’s window

To chase down and fight any hound she sees.

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Heidi Lynn Stapes, a part-time faculty member at Syracuse University, is the author of the poetry collection, Guess Can Gallop (New Issues, 2004). Her poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry of 2004, Denver Quarterly, Electronic Poetry Review, La Petite Zine, and the Georgia Review.