Carly Weiser is the resident Production Manager of Alleyway Theatre and Buffalo United Artists. Her poems have been published in Maudlin House, Lady Literary Magazine, Vending Machine Press & Mixtape Methodology. She tweets @cultcarly.
1 poem by Carly Weiser
The Shelf Life of Cherries
Start your engine.
Glide softly over hyena screams and Instagram spam.
Review your day, to do list, hot guy who smiled at you at work -- but he had a wedding ring -- just let the water fountain squirt instead.
Try not to think of your gynecologist's fingers searching around you, your impossible sexual braille.
Shake it off.
Think about the summer.
Celling fans, radiator breath, and the boy who popped your cherry cherry-
Now you’re working with something.
He put that cherry in a place it wasn't comfortable but over time it grew on me and turned me red and finally I had found something that matched my blood.
Pick up the pace -- think about bike bells, brown hair and height differences.
Age differences against the kitchen sink.
Both with enough drinks.
The shelf life of cherries left on the counter is 2-3 days.
Take a break, roll around, think about liberty and justice for all and if you left any lights on in the theatre.
Think about how you're still hiding in 2017. You're going to arrive. You're just fashionably late.
Think about the one you preserved.
Get sad, get confused, get guilty.
There is a monogamy man in the other room.
Get angry. Get motivated.
Punch in and roll-
Drugs and line readings in the dining room with Peter Pans.
Refrigerated, cherries can last 5-10 days.
Act candid and take pictures on disposable cameras. Flash to face down and eyes rolled, arched backs and pointed toes.
I dance like no one is watching -- but only because they're not. Thrust out to do lists and fights I've had with the man in the other room about things he doesn't know are buried deep. I like the taste of different tap waters at 4am. I like being called bae so I feel relevant. I like waking up across town in various degrees of sheets. I like things in places they don't belong.
...And I love him, and the next, and the next, and I think I mean it. And I breathe and he breathes and the next breathes and my dead ex lover breathes and I love them all. I look into their eyes and I see the future. I see the kind of woman I can be. I exhale monogamy.
I breathe cherry red and my engines cool. I Uhaul plantations as I roll. I open my eyes. I watch the ceiling fan spin.
Canned cherries can last indefinitely.