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Poetry Meets Modeling With Richmond’s Tiffanie Brooke

S. Preston Duncan | March 19, 2020

Topics: art, instagram, modeling, photography, poetry, richmond va, RVA, RVA 39, Tiffanie Brooke

RVA #39 is on the streets now! Here’s another article from the issue, in which artist and poet Tiffanie Brooke reflects on modeling, writing, and the power of the human body in self-expression.

“We are more than the skin we crawl around in.” 

Let’s be honest: among the self-styled “Instapoets” of the world, often there isn’t more behind their words than vaguely-poetic interpretations of fortune cookies and phrases from motivational posters. And while it is wildly popular, whether or not it is authentically poetry could be up for debate. Exceptions to this generality are somewhat rare, but Richmond’s artist and poet Tiffanie Brooke is undeniably one of them. Her writing is both accessible and well-crafted, a refreshing combination in the literary world of stuffy academic writing and pandering to popularity.

Brooke is an alternative model and a deeply candid poet. Her work is evocative, both in front of the camera and on the page. It’s her juxtaposition of imagery that defines who she is as an artist, and it provides a window into her expressive dynamic of strength and unique vulnerability.

RVA Magazine’s R. Anthony Harris had a chance to talk with Brooke about her work, and explore the ideas that sparked her artistic beginnings.

PHOTO: Tiffanie Brooke by Charles Long, RVA 39

R. Anthony Harris:  How did your modeling begin?

Tiffanie Brooke:  I had a very negative outlook on my body when I was a teenager; I was super thin, I didn’t have a chest. My cheekbones jut out. My nose goes off in one direction. I consistently beat myself up… One day I came across America’s Next Top Model, and I became obsessed. I was seeing women that looked like I did, and they all had something about them that matched my “weird.” 

RAH:  How long have you been writing? 

TB:  I’ve been writing as long as I can remember. My brother and I were advised to write in those god-awful composition notebooks by counselors when we were very young. We grew up in a very confusing environment for two small children; I did not come from a communicative family. Writing was, and still is, my form of communication, though this non-direct writing has given me a safe way to express myself. 

RAH:  When did both of these ideas start to intertwine? 

TB:  They intertwined when Instagram became popular, honestly. I thought it was the perfect way to give my work a visual; to further push whatever I was writing about at the time. I wanted to give “selfies” another form, and transform how the imagery in my writing was supposed to look. Why not try to capture a visual of how I feel when I’m “in it,” versus a photo of something else entirely? After all, I’m writing about an experience and how it affects me.

RAH:  What writers do you draw inspiration from?

TB:  James Kavanaugh, Kris Kidd, Louis Gluck, Claudia Emerson, Jayne Pupek, and Richard Siken are a few that I obsess over when writer’s block settles in. Each one is immensely different in their writing types and points of view, but I sympathize with a lot of them. They all seem to capture the vastness of my personality traits.

RAH:  What about photographers?

TB:  I don’t have many photographers that I draw inspiration from, really. I enjoy Jason Lee Perry’s works — I read over a particular piece, and envision it as a movie with me in the middle of it: “What would this scene look like?” 

RAH:  Do you see modeling as a way for people to read your writings?

TB:  Modeling in itself is a form of communication, so absolutely! Saint Jerome said, “The face is the mirror of the mind, and the eyes, without speaking, confess the secrets of the heart.” Modeling and writing are both forms of expression, so it made sense for me to combine the two. Tacking onto what I’ve said before, we’re conditioned to choke down how we physically handle our emotions. I try to capture those emotions visually.

RAH:  Is your body a weapon or a tool?

TB:  Tough question. I am consistently working with, and against, my body. I think we all are, in some shape or form. 

RAH:  Is it a problem when trying to be taken seriously as an artist? 

TB:  There is a very fine line in the public eye — of owning your body, and being sexualized for exhibiting confidence — and that has nothing to do with being an artist. It’s hard being a woman in any industry. Shit, it’s hard being a woman, period. Most of my modeling used for my writing is nude. It’s not an attention thing at all, but more to push that vulnerability of here I am, in all that I am. Clothes are character-building, and we aren’t entirely truthful with ourselves until the veil of that day-to-day character is removed. Unfortunately, because of my comfort in that, I am often looked at as an object… and it stops there. 

RAH:  What does objectification mean to you? 

TB:  Taking something at face value, without intent to find out the inner workings of an individual. 

RAH:  Do you objectify other people?

TB:  Not all the time, and not on purpose. Sometimes I have to force myself to. I am a very deep person; I spend a lot of time in my head. If I didn’t push myself to draw a line with someone that is bouncing around too much mentally, I’d be miserable. We all have individual ways of processing relationships with others, and sometimes it comes down to what we find works best for us. I have a tendency to switch off my feelings for someone completely, and that’s typically where I end up objectifying. 

RAH:  Is it demeaning, or are people just looking for a quick way to understand another person? 

TB:  When I write about a specific person, I don’t use names as to not intentionally hurt or demean someone. I always give individuals code names, and honestly I think it makes some pieces more mysterious and puzzling. I like that about poetry. That said, resonation is such an important factor in any type of writing — we are all looking to be understood in some way. Music and writing are excellent ways to fill that void of alienation.

RAH:  I have to ask about the Yoda tattoo. Do you love his wisdom, or are you just a super nerd? 

TB:  The Yoda tattoo began as a tribute to my relationship with my dad. There aren’t many positive memories attached to him when I think back on my childhood, except for our shared TV time. He got me into Star Wars when I was really young, and we’d watch the series over and over, weekly. Maybe for him, it was one of the few things we could do together that I wasn’t talking his ear off, but that I walked away from with an adoration for a fantasy world I wanted to find myself in. We didn’t expect there to be sequels, but it’s a relief to have something we can continue to connect on.

RAH:  What do you hope people understand about your work? 

TB:  I am so much more than a “half-naked girl on Instagram.” There is always more than meets the surface; everyone is where they are because of an experience that set them there. If we all took a little more time to understand each other at more than face value, we would come to know that we are more than the skin we crawl around in. Writing is free, and always available. Whether pen-to-paper or in the notepad on a cell phone, the ability to set our inner workings out in one way or another is incredibly healthy — and important. You never know how much your experiences can aid another person’s until you make yourself vulnerable. 

Intro by S. Preston Duncan. Interview by R. Anthony Harris.  

Roscoe Burnems’ Traumedy Brings Uplifting Humor To Difficult Subjects

Alicen Hackney | January 23, 2020

Topics: events in richmond va, events near me this weekend, events richmond va, families, James Harris, poetry, richmond events, richmond va, Roscoe Burnems, RVA, spoken word, The HEALing Hub, things to do in richmond va, things to do richmond va, Traumedy

Prepare to laugh, cry, and laugh again — spoken-word artist Roscoe Burnems will premiere his first stand-up special, Traumedy, at The HEALing Hub this Sunday.

“Laugh till you cry, cry till you laugh.” As award-winning spoken word artist and RVA local Roscoe Burnems brings together comedy and spoken word for his first film special, Traumedy — premiering at The HEALing Hub on Sunday, January 26 — be prepared to do more than just sit back and enjoy. This healing presentation will start conversations on hard topics even as it brings some light-hearted humor to each.

“If you can’t laugh at the pain, what can you do with it?” said Burnems. “You can’t let it make you bitter, but you can let it make you better.”

Living up to its amalgamated title, Traumedy blends comedy with the traumatic realities of life, which for Burnems particularly focuses on the experiences of men in the black community. By discussing fatherhood, addiction, relationships, and mental health care acceptance, Burnems opens the dialogue for men to grow and open up from their past traumas in personable ways. 

“‘Children without fathers’ should have been the name of my mixtape. I know it’s a pretty common thing, having to deal with neglect and absence, how traumatic that can be, and how that can affect our mental health. I’m at a point in life where I can joke about it,” said Burnems. “[In the show] I attack what my relationship with my father is like after I got a chance to meet him, and talk briefly about what issues he may have been facing as a youth that maybe contributed to the neglect he gave his kids, or not wanting to be in the lives of his children.”

By opening up about personal struggles and heartaches, Burnems not only continues to work through them himself, but allows other men a space to begin healing and eventually learn to laugh at the pain as well. 

“Comedy was one of my first loves. My mom let me watch a VHS of Def Comedy Jam, which was probably not the most responsible thing,” Burnems said. “But it sparked this passion for telling a story, sharing this difficult content and making it funny. This is me marrying the two to create an experience where people can literally laugh till they cry and cry till they laugh.” 

Originally a live show that Burnems performed in October 2019, Traumedy was filmed and edited to prepare for an online release through Amazon Prime. In the filming process, Burnems received glowing audience feedback and created a trailer that encompassed the heart of the experience. Within the longer trailer, Burnems tells knock-knock jokes based on absent fathers and focuses commentary on how he has hoped to grow beyond that absence within his own family and become a strong father figure for his children. 

“The father is a really important part of my identity as someone who grew up without their father present. And now I am a proud father of two, a 13-year-old and a three-year-old, which makes the house really interesting,” said Burnems. “My kids are with me every day, and I take a lot of pride in that, because I really didn’t see that growing up, and I knew how important having that figure in the household could be.”

The strength of this presentation did not go unnoticed. Beyond audience members who have appreciated Burnems’ work, he has also gained a strong reach within the mental health community in Richmond. After the live show last year, James Harris, a Richmond based mental health professional and owner of The HEALing Hub, approached Burnems to discuss showing the special to more men who need the vocabulary and permission to express themselves and the struggles they have gone through and never been encouraged to talk about. The film’s premiere at The HEALing Hub this Sunday is the fruit of the growing relationship between these men working towards a common goal. 

“I think the environment [Harris has] created with The HEALing Hub, and the energy around that, is very in-tune with what Traumedy stands for,” said Burnems. “It’s entertainment, designed to get a laugh. Some of it gets kinda dark, and the content gets kinda heavy, but you walk away having learned something about yourself — and that’s what therapy is designed to do. It all runs together.” 

Beyond Traumedy and beyond taking his children to school and sports practices, Burnems focuses his time working with Richmond’s middle and high school students, bringing them access to spoken word and other similar art forms to teach them how to express themselves through their own struggles. 

“It’s been so fulfilling, especially as a teaching artist, to gift a love of mine to a generation who didn’t really have access to this art form before. I stumbled across poetry when I was really young because I was fortunate enough to have teachers who also really loved poetry,” said Burnems. “I grew up a regular black kid in a regular black school, where if you liked to write or liked poetry in some way, shape, or form that meant you liked to rap. Everybody I knew was rapping. The stigma was that boys weren’t allowed to be soft, or be storytellers in this way.”

Between Burnems’ platforms of influence, he primarily focuses his energy on gifting and lifting other’s voices. Whether he is working with students or encouraging adults through a shared laugh and tears, there is no leaving his presence without a more open heart.

“The students get a chance to vocalize it and feel empowered by their ability to use their voice in this way,” Burnems said of the goals for the film. “At the end of the day, we’ve all experienced some level of trauma and neglect, these very hard-hitting emotions. Those things aren’t specific to any one type or group of people, so it’s stripping away some of the statistics to focus on how you personally identify with it and stepping away for a moment of self care.” 

For some soul healing and belly laughter, make sure you attend the premiere of Traumedy on Sunday, January 26th at The HEALing Hub, located at 916 N Arthur Ashe Blvd. You can find tickets on Eventbrite for $10, or purchase at the door. And never fear, if you can’t make it, later this month the film will be made available on Amazon Prime.

“I really want people to take this journey with me,” said Burnems, “and find themselves along the way.”

Hit Me When I’m Pretty

S. Preston Duncan | December 2, 2019

Topics: Hit Me When I'm Pretty, Poems For Dead People, poetry, RVA 38, RVA poets, Ryan Kent, Secretly Y'all

RVA Mag #38 is on the streets now! Here’s the first article, in which Ryan Kent, the author behind Poems for Dead People, talks rock bottom, writing, and redemption with the release of his latest book.

You know the tune: boy grows up on dreams of baseball, falling asleep to bedtime stories of a future riding into battle, saving the princess, starring in his own fairytale. Boy wakes up 30 years later, in an abandoned house full of empty beer cans and cigarette butts, with his baseball bat in a pile of broken glass. With a divorce and a drinking problem, slouched over a space heater, he writes poetry in an old fur coat. It could end there. It probably should have ended there, logically.

This story, felt by those whose childhoods took similarly-unexpected turns, is the story of Ryan Kent: a Richmond artist whose work has become increasingly recognized throughout local poetic and musical communities.

Kent recently released his third collection of poetry, Hit Me When I’m Pretty. His poems are blunt; comical out of necessity, and told with a mortician’s smile alongside vulnerability. The new book, like Kent, is sober and unflinching. It’s the kind of thing that can only be written by someone who hasn’t been seized by morbid fascination, but instead walked the path of death and changed direction. That path began with his first book, Poems for Dead People.

“I got that idea when I wrote a random poem after Norman Mailer died,” Kent said. “I had an autographed copy of Time of Our Time. I wanted to see how many people had put their things up for sale. There was a lot of stuff — it just put it in my head that if you have a name for yourself, you really aren’t anything until someone can exploit you.”

Kent with his latest collection, Hit Me When I’m Pretty, at Plan 9 Music. Photo by Amy Robison

Kent started writing poetry as a teenager, but those early pieces weren’t the angsty ruminations that you might expect from someone who would end up earning cautious comparisons to Bukowski in his later years.

“The shit that I wrote back then was bad, man. It was flowery and whimsical,” Kent said. “You know, dance, dance, dance, tree tops, fly, fly, fly. That kind of shit. I didn’t really know what poetry was, all I knew was what I learned in school. It just didn’t resonate deeply with me. The things that I related to were songs by Nirvana and Soundgarden.”

“Then I read Allen Ginsberg, and it was completely different. It helped show the mechanism. It helped wake that up a little bit. I didn’t really do anything but swim team and baseball. And when I didn’t do that anymore, I had no substance. And I decided I was going to be a writer; I really loved it,” Kent said. “I loved reading books and collecting books, and those became my heroes in the same way as Jose Canseco, Greg Maddux, Jeff Bagwell, Shaquille O’Neal — all those guys were my heroes. These guys didn’t let me down. A lot of ‘em were already dead.”

Richmond abounds with outlets for spoken word artists for whom performance is an integral aspect of their work. But Kent is not a spoken word artist. He’s more of a storyteller with a passion for line breaks.

“I like going up and just telling the story,” Kent said. “Secretly Y’all — I did that once and that was cool. Everything has to be done off the cuff.”

Secretly Y’all is a local organization in Richmond that hosts live storytelling events every other month for the community to participate in and attend. Similar to many spoken word poetry events, listeners gather in a close room and performers are given a theme: but rather than pre-written poems, Secretly Y’all speakers are chosen randomly from names voluntarily thrown into a hat, and share their personal truths from memory in a full story.

“You tell this true story about the topic they decide,” Kent said. “Some people are just great storytellers. Like when you go sit at the bar, and they just rattle off all this stuff that they did 20 years ago. And man, beer is so easy to drink when you’re sitting next to that person.” 

Photo by Jill Hammer

That kind of training doesn’t come with certification, but with an awestruck history of storytelling credibility. There is a belief in the clarity of hindsight among barstool storytellers, like Kent and his heroes: the idea that you have to give yourself over to the absurdity of chaos and despair, so that one day you might dig your way out and make sense of it all.

If there’s an overarching narrative to Kent’s collections, it’s certainly that. 

“The first [book] was cathartic for me. I wrote about people that I actually knew, and people that fascinated me. I could relate it to my own life,” Kent said. “But it was mostly done from a deep ache in my childhood, while the other two focused on my new periods. And those all have a glow of heartbreak, in one way or another.”

Growing up in a small family, Kent’s formative experiences with loss revolved around the deaths of holiday relatives he only saw once a year — and nevertheless, still found himself mourning.

Macabre fixation isn’t exactly a novel concept in the literary world, but Kent’s approach to it offers a life-affirming honesty that doesn’t rely on sugary positivity. The antihero of his own botched American Dream, Kent’s narrative style plucks at the mundane nature of everyday life. It finds tragedy in the miraculous and, more significantly, doesn’t distinguish between the two.

“I think I just look at how profound someone’s story is,” Kent said. “The person sitting next to you at the stoplight, it’s some lady with a purple shirt on, and she’s in some Geo Metro that’s still running. I don’t know how. You just happen to glance over at her. She’s just some person. And she will have an end, and her story will be over. Everybody’s got some story that that would mean something to other people, regardless of whether that story is good or bad.”

Photo by Audrey Shadowwoman

“One of the Poems for Dead People is called ‘You’ll Never Make It as a Singer.’ It was about this rockabilly performer named Eddie Bond. He was in the rockabilly Hall of Fame, he wrote songs for like 40 years. And he is best known for being the man who rejected Elvis Presley.”

“[When] Elvis Presley tried out for his band, he said, ‘You better stick to truck driving, you’ll never make it as a singer.’ So his legacy was being the one who rejected The Man Who Would Be King. He did all that to be remembered for the mistake he made. Maybe he wasn’t right for his band. We’ll never know. That mistake overshadowed everything. Isn’t that the story of every human being?”

Kent became accustomed to being vulnerable as he started posting his poems online, and later joined a band —  a similar outlet for expressing his words. Once his wife left him, he noted that he “kind of flew on.” Without a care, he moved forward, but in a self-destructive manner. It was around this time that his second book, This Is Why I Am Insane, started coming together. And everything else in his life fell apart.

Sleeping on the couch without heat or a bed, Kent resided in an abandoned house. His best work came out of this accumulation of life’s bad decisions, as he almost literally slept in the bed that he made.

“It was a cave,” Kent said. “It was awesome because I could smoke cigarettes inside, I could drink inside, I could play music as loud as I wanted, swing my baseball bat around. I didn’t have any heat, so I had space heaters. I had electricity, no running water. The bathroom and the kitchen were both demolished. And I loved it. I would sit there and smoke cigarettes in a fucking fur coat in the wintertime and just get trashed. It was like camping, camping by myself.”

Image and Photos by R. Anthony Harris

“I was at the bottom, but not that hard. Real bottom is when you have no other choice. I had fuckin’ choices. I could have been somewhere else. I chose that. That was all I knew I wanted to do at the time.”

If This Is Why I Am Insane welled up from a whiskey-colored pit of metal riffs and heartbreak, Hit Me When I’m Pretty is a process of silence and acceptance. There are no Eat, Pray, Love-style motivational morals. No peachy preaching about flowers sprouting from soils, watered with liquid that doesn’t have an alcohol content. Nothing is suddenly and magically great. But it is better.

“I was pushing a lot of people away from me. I was really angry. I was hurt. People always used to tell me, you’re a functioning alcoholic, barely functioning. And I started looking at how there’s always a crisis in my life,” Kent said. “There’s always some fucking problem, and what’s always in my life is alcohol. I remember sitting at the Fasmart across from Millie’s on Main Street. I was going to get a six-pack of Hamm’s for like, $3.99, and there’s this dude outside asking for a dollar. I got a sandwich. I gave the man a dollar, and got back in my car. And then I just didn’t drink. Then I didn’t drink the next day. And it wasn’t really hard, because I was just fucking over it. And then a month went by, and I looked at the track record of the past month, and the month before. And the only thing that had been removed was alcohol.”

“I’m still going through shit. It’s not like a bunch of happy stuff. I’ve read some happy poems by Billy Collins that I really like,” Kent said, “but the ones that always hit me the most were the ones that had a heavy air of poignancy. In that, I saw a type of beauty in something that’s heartbreaking and sad.”

Typed almost entirely on a cell phone notepad app — according to Kent, the only way to accommodate his ADD — Hit Me When I’m Pretty isn’t a story about redemption. But it is itself a kind of triumph; not over mundanity, but through it.

One poem that stands out to readers in Kent’s latest book: two dudes watching a dog eat shit.

“Two dudes watching a dog eat shit. Yeah. It was actually glorious,” Kent said. “Really, it’s taking a picture of how low someone is, that watching this dog eat shit was just unexpected and funny. It’s like a little break in the monotony of darkness. And that’s kind of where I was in my life. So doing it this time, it was some sober thoughts about ‘What the fuck am I doing with my life?’”

The new book may be a sense of relief for Kent, or it may just be step one of everything else coming. Like a CD coming out of a brand-new cover, all scratched up after six months, the latest piece of art can often feels like the artist’s peak… until, down the road, it lays a foundation for their best work. Getting better is the focus, and real writers can put it into words and break your heart with it.

Photo by Audrey Shadowwoman

For Hit Me When I’m Pretty, the spark for the title came from an artistic whim.

“It just popped into my head,” Kent said. “There’s this quote I heard a long time ago, it was Jose Marti — I might be wrong, but it was ‘It’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees.’ It was the same idea, that if you’re gonna knock me down, do it when I’m doing well. Do it when I’m doing good.”

“Or at least let me stand up and fix my fucking hair.”

Interview by R. Anthony Harris, words by S. Preston Duncan. Top Photo by R. Anthony Harris. Other photos via Poems By This Fool/Facebook

Gone But Not Forgotten: A Sisterhood That Lives Forever

Christopher Brown | September 26, 2019

Topics: art, black art, black poets, ICA, Institute for Contemporary art VCU, maya angelou, nikki giovanni, poetry, The Bluest Eye, the pieces i am, toni morrison, vcu

After Toni Morrison’s passing, her close friend and poet Nikki Giovanni reflected on their story at the Institute of Contemporary Art at VCU.

Picture this: the year is 1970, and author Toni Morrison just published her first book, The Bluest Eye. The book is gaining nationwide attention from critics and readers alike. One reader in particular is fascinated by the novel, especially due to the deep level of storytelling — particularly impressive in Morrison’s first published book. That reader wanted to meet Morrison in person and get to know her on a personal level… so she “stalked” her.

As it happens, that reader was renowned poet Nikki Giovanni. Both she and Morrison happened to live in New York City at the time. Giovanni found out where Morrison’s office was, walked from her apartment on 92nd Street to the office on 52nd Street location, stood outside, and waited for Morrison.

“One thing about me, I can wait for forever,” Giovanni said of her story waiting for Morrison. The two eventually met that day, and thus began a sisterhood that transcends life itself.

Even now, in 2019, Giovanni still talks fondly of that day. Despite age and medical issues affecting her mind, her memories of her friend remain unfazed.

Photo by Christopher Brown

On Wednesday, September 11th, VCU’s Institute of Contemporary Art hosted a screening of the documentary Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am. It was at this event where Giovanni told the story of her first meeting with Morrison, who passed away in August at the age of 88. The post-screening discussion with Giovanni focused on her lifelong friendship with Morrison, and the way they inspired each other during difficult times.

“When [my mother] died, I called Toni… I’m sad and I needed some advice,” Giovanni recalled. “[I asked her] ‘What should I do?’ and she said, ‘Write.’ I wrote a poem for Toni.”

A mixture of happiness and sadness filled Giovanni’s voice when she shared memories of herself and Morrison. The audience was made up of strangers to their world, but nonetheless felt the waves of emotions as they filled the room. One memory took Giovanni back to 2012, when she, Morrison, and Maya Angelou, among others, were hosted by Virginia Tech as they paid tribute to the author after she lost her son two years prior.

“What I wanted was that we give back something to Toni,” Giovanni said of the event. “What we wanted was, ‘Could you come and read your favorite Toni Morrison?’”

Photo by Christopher Brown

The event was magical but bittersweet for the sisterhood of writers, as Angelou would pass two years later — and eventually the honoree, Toni Morrison, passed on as well. 

“What she said that struck us all,” Giovanni said, “was, ‘If nothing else ever happens for me in my public life, this does it for me.’ It brought tears to my eyes.”

Giovanni’s love for her “sister” is a prime example of the effect that Toni Morrison had on her friends, family, and fans, both in her writing and her presence. In The Pieces I Am, activists and writers like Sonia Sanchez and Angela Davis got emotional when discussing the magnitude of Morrison’s legacy.

Now in her late 70s, Giovanni has survived two battles with cancer and a stroke, and yet, she is one of the few writers of this powerful black sisterhood that’s still alive. Moments like this event at the ICA, or the 2012 tribute at Virginia Tech, are rare treats, giving the public a glimpse of how special and important this sisterhood was and is — to Giovanni, to Morrison, and to many others.

ICA cinema hosts films every second Wednesday at 7 p.m and is free and open to the public.

Top Photo by Christopher Brown

Best of RVA Missed Connections November 28-December 4

RVA Staff | December 4, 2018

Topics: Charlottesville, darts, Fredericksburg, grimaldis, Hampton, heartbreak, Hopewell, missed connections, Norfolk, poetry, richmond, stafford

Hey there, lonely people… are the holiday blues getting you down? Are you looking for love in all the wrong places? Well maybe this week, missed connections is the right place for you.

This will be especially true if you’re a manager at a pizza place, or someone who’d proudly call yourself a redneck. And if you want to meet the man you could’ve been, well… you just might be in luck there, too. Just try not to overuse the exclamation point key too much.

Are you a manager? (Grimaldi’s)

What a beautiful guy. My cheese pizza was “overstretched” lol but you can slice my pizza any day. Hit me up.

To the man…

…I could have been.

I’m too far gone to change now. All the wrong choices along the way, all the epiphanies that came much too late. All the attempts that were made to do better that never found roots.

It doesn’t matter now. Coasting to the finish; full of regret, rage and internalized self loathing.

Sometimes it’s best to accept you are the villain in your own story.

Cute shoes

There’s probably no chance that you will ever see this and it’s probably inappropriate, but…I said that I like your shoes and that I very well may have a foot thing. We both laughed about it. I want you to know that I think you are gorgeous and wish I could see your sexy feet and more.

You broke my heart (NN)

You broke my heart when we broke up! I thought it was due to me being broke! What broke the bond was my refusal to “have a sleepover” with you and your BFF! I’ve changed my mind, please take me back! I’ll “hang out” with you both for now! Or if you’ve found another bloke, the news of that would make me choke! Let’s get together, talk it out, I’d be glad to buy you a Coke, or have a smoke, or take a toke, or we could even sail my boat! Just make me smile, say yes for a while, oh baby when I say to you, that I’d be glad to make you 2, if not then I will be so blue, but I will find a love anew. She may not have a friend like yours, and if that were true life would be a bore. But we would have to face the facts, and just go home and do it!

pool n darts (Richmond)

you were playin meat puppets and of montreal while playing pool/darts. seemed like your tinder date wasnt going so well. would like to hang sometime. u rock

Redneck in white Chevy at 7-11 (south Stafford)

You were leaving as I came in you nodded to me. I’d like to check out your truck and see what’s under the hood and check that big thing out.

lonely girl

I get off at 6

wanna hang out

xooxoo

Missing you Christina (Hopewell)

I miss you. The times we spent listening to music and talking about deep, deep stuff. I’m sorry of how everything went, I was scared of falling for anyone that soon after my divorce. I know I hurt you, and I didn’t mean to. Every time I go to mun cheese I think of you. Or when I listen to pink floyd

I saw you looking

If you ever want to chat or get together, let me know. I saw you sitting on your front porch indian style like you do every day smoking a cigarette. It was early in the morning and I was wearing my shorts and a t shirt and I was adjusting the good ole morning erec… while standing on my porch. I saw you looking through the cars. If you liked it lets talk.

I spanked you – prior military M4M (Stafford)

We met about a year ago, you answered my ad about spanking. I came to your house in Spotsylvania. You prior military guy, str8 but with kinky side. Similar here. Had great time, up for a repeat. Hope to hear from you.

The Sunday Reader: The Most Beautiful Girl In The World & Other Poems

Ryan Kent | November 5, 2017

Topics: poetry, Ryan Kent, Sunday Stroll, This Is Why I Am Insane

Today’s Sunday Reader comes from writer and musician Ryan Kent and is one of the many poems found in his most recent anthology titled This is Why I am Insane.

 

98. THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE WORLD

she told people she was           v e n u s

collected rocks and other silly shit

said this one was good fortune

this one was for testicular fortitude

gave them and a few more to me

i threw them in her front yard

as i walked back to the car

she called me drunk at 3 am

about making dandelion tea

said the stars were aligned

and the moon and the gods

and the seasons wanted

us to dance naked in her

front yard where she saw

me toss the handful of rocks

told her i’d be over in a few

n o w         she may have not been       v e n u s

but it’s not like i’m royalty

                                            e i t h e r

 

24. THERE WON’T BE ANY STATUES

her married name was a city in italy

she had yellow purple green bruises

on her legs and arms

track marks

encore

 

thinking of that girl and another one

as i sit next to strangers in brooklyn

drinking corona alone      l o s t      c on  f  u se d

 

no intention of going back

or being asked to turn around for that matter

                 that’s ok

 

one of these days things will be different

 

until then i’ll slink by

breathing at one bar

and breathing at another

holding my breath

in between

 

119. A HORRIBLE DISGUSTING HABIT

the last girl wasn’t around anymore

i spent three days drunk with

some redheaded b i r d

up in her bed       her little    d o g    too

            then it began to wear off

and wore off quickly      f a s t

    like cheap varnish flaking from

            cheaper wood

    then i dropped a house on her

little vintage shoes

                                pointing up

      then there was this town

      then another one      &       g i r l s

girlsgirlsgirlsgirlsgirlsgirls                           g i r l s

now i’m walking up these new stairs

a place where i creak

but the floors

do not

 

141. THIS IS WHY I AM INSANE

she has that curly hair you

can only get if you were to scalp

some unlucky son of a bitch

wore dresses      like carmen m i r a n d a

smoked cigarettes          drank bourbon

could fit on the back of a     sport bike

she collected knick knacks

and cats and skulls and dead bugs

had some knives and custom guitars

the hairs in my five o’clock shadow

have started turning gray now and

everything is too damn loouuudddd

i lie in my bed      on my    b a c k

ask my feet if i was right

was i right to leave her

wait for them to give an answer

but just like me

they got      n o t h i n g

 

26. THE FOX

must have given her number

to forty men that night

she was new to this stretch of road

from somewhere out west

everyone wanted to know her

even me

eventually she made it my way

blinking her eyes

stirring at some drink

wearing some strappy dress

talking all kinds of shit

while i filled an ashtray

on that wooden patio

clever women

cover all their bases

no one wants to be caught

looking over the fence

when standing

ten feet from

the bag

 

82. RED FLAGS IN A PRETTY DRESS

she turned over that time in her bed

back and mermaid hair to me

didn’t like what i’d said about love

i counted her boxes of shoes

her scarves and ties and necklaces

and dresses and hats and purses

from my exiled side of the mattress

her cat hopped up       purred on my chest

made little kiss faces at me

that’s when i knew i was finished

and that’s when i knew i was glad

    oh       we muscled on for a while

but we were already a dead m o u s e

that was no longer fun to toss

             cats sure got a hold on

this reality thing

most of us play dress up

 

112. SPIRIT THAT BEAT THE JAPANESE

he said we had wooden dreams

that we were foolish stubborn boys

real men get out of bed before 7 am

they don’t wear seatbelts   e i t h e r

said christian academy would fix us

knock us down a few pegs

spent years proving them wrong

sleeping through the afternoon

flying under the radar

ignoring all of the gods

our own private suicide missions

now we’re poor drunks

and at night we remember

that we love our fathers

no matter how much

we hate them

 

 

Find more of Ryan Kent’s work HERE.
If you would like to submit writings for consideration into The Sunday Reader, contact us [email protected].

 

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