Spencer Robert Young

 

The damp cup of a Fruit of the Loom bra

in my right hand, a fistful of rose lace panties

 

and heather grey boxer briefs in the other.

Yeah, they left bullets in the washer again —

 

big, nasty cartridges for putting holes in game.

Early Sunday, I woke to their dogs’ whimpers

 

echoing through the loose walls of this oldest house

on Asbury. They’d left hours before, off to clip

 

and claim some white elk somewhere north of town.

It’s a sad story for them, the elk, a man

 

with a kerosene grill and homemade tempeh

told me at the park. White elk is just another name

 

for reindeer, he said. They’re noninvasive, just grazers,

he said. Zero protections; literal free game, he said.

 

Later, I found a fat blunt resting idle atop the water

heater in the laundry room and thought twice about

 

pocketing it. If nothing else, I deserve a good, weird night

on their bill, I said. I’ll blow the smoke into their window

 

A/C unit, I said. I did not say either of these things.

That said, I also did not live here when my landlord

 

installed a keyless lock on the laundry door. And I did

not live here when my neighbors said they found used

 

needles on the back stoop. And I did not live here

when the garden plots in the east yard were uprooted

 

so the dogs had a place to shit. And I did not live

here when the porch was lined with leafy bushes,

growing wild with flowers and yellowjackets in spring.

I did not live here then, but yes, I live here now.


Doing the Neighbor’s Laundry

& after

& after you found cantaloupes the size of bullmastiffs in the garden, you ate them, dripping sticky with a tie-dye shirt tied round your forehead

& after picking leaves from the basil shrub, shearing green sprite to royal bud, you threw eggshell paint at the sunset with tangerine milkshake and muddy pride

& after combing down the dog, fur fibers taken to the Kansan wind, you got lost in the intricacies of your kneecap, wobbly little friend to help you pick up pennies

& after emptying the bag of kettle-cooked jalapeño chips, you chortled the engine, befriended raccoon roadkill, and drove like a libertine to the Missouri Valley HuHot

& after masturbating, you looked up and saw Christ — he was a child, lazy in the dentist’s chair, bubblegum fluoride treatment trickling down his chin

& after you came out to your parents, you shoplifted three cherry Blow Pops and an intermediate sudoku puzzle book from the neighborhood Walgreens

& afterwards, you drove fistfuls of wildflower seed into the supple earth of the hole sixteen putting green and stood guerilla guard for eleven weeks until they bloomed

& after the plague, you stabbed a blunted steak knife into murky dishwater with lavender soap bubbles, failing to remember how gentle violence could feel

& after the sun disappeared and Earth’s axis tilted left, you could still hear the sound of wind in your ear, the air and its scent of Clorox wipes and book binding glue

& after it all, when God balloons and pops like flavorless bubblegum, you will try to savor what remains, like scraping crab meat from its pink and orange exoskeleton

Spencer Robert Young is a writer. Lately, they’ve been writing a lot about late-night snacks, 80s hard rock, and death. Spencer holds an MA in Creative Writing and Literature from Kansas State University and an MFA in Poetry from the University of Idaho. Winner of an Academy of American Poets Prize, Spencer's work has appeared or is forthcoming in a number of literary magazines and journals, including Frazzled Lit, Thimble Literary Magazine, and Terrain.org, among others. Their original chamber opera, Let's Blow Up A Gas Station!, premiered with Seattle Opera in 2024. You can learn more about them and their work at their website.

Artwork: “Slapstick” by Daniel Lurie

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