Tag: Brett Warren

Avocados by Brett Warren

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Avocados

Your boyfriend worked on an avocado farm.
He’d bring us flats of the ones too ripe
for grocery stores. We’d watch from the door
while he parked his truck and reached
into the bed, shirtsleeves rolled up, arms
muscular and tan from all that lifting

and the sun. I wasn’t a fan—in fact
one night I pushed him up against a wall
when I thought he was being sanctimonious
with you. That was the word I used,
sanctimonious. He was stunned.

The land of avocados was an embarrassment
of riches, no matter how much guacamole
a girl could mash up. So we gave avocados
to everyone, even the building manager,
who didn’t call the cops or kick us out
when one of our parties got a little loud.

Now it’s supply-chain problems, bad climate,
avocados watery half the time, not so rich
anymore, pits no longer perfect planets
you could stick toothpicks in, grow a tree
if you wanted to. We never wanted to.
Did I ever apologize to that boyfriend

for that time with the wall? He said
we were full of ourselves and went back
to Oklahoma, where no one would imply
he was anything but a nice guy. No one
cried. But he was right—we took chances.
We had strange friends, stayed out too late
when we went dancing. That boyfriend

was the future, and we weren’t there yet.
We still wanted to sit barefoot in the sun,
scooping buttery curls from alligator shells
we held in our hands. You and me, a pair
of mismatched chairs. All we ever needed
was a sharp knife, a little coarse salt.

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Brett Warren (she/her) is a long-time editor and the author of The Map of Unseen Things (Pine Row Press, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in Canary, Halfway Down the Stairs, Harbor Review, Hole in the Head Review, ONE ART, Rise Up Review, and other literary publications. A triple nominee for Best of the Net 2024 (Poetry), she lives in a house surrounded by pitch pine and black oak trees—nighttime roosts of wild turkeys, who sometimes use the roof of her writing attic as a runway. brettwarrenpoetry.com

Two Poems by Brett Warren

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Impetus
Midtown Manhattan

A woman runs up as we exit the coffee shop.
She’s wearing a black sleeveless dress
and a cross-body briefcase, and could pass
for an office worker if not for her bare feet.
She is crying. She wants to know if we know
where Georgia the state office of Georgia is.
When we say no, she zigzags to a security guard
coming onto his shift, asks him where is Georgia
the state office of Georgia. She doesn’t wait
for an answer, but careens down the wide
and mostly empty sidewalk. The security guard
watches her go, as if considering whether
to call someone, but she turns the corner
onto 5th Avenue, where a man who would later
be president said he could shoot someone
in the street and his followers wouldn’t care.
We turn the same corner, see the woman
lurch past a man pushing a broom.
He barely looks up, just keeps sweeping.
She pings from person to person, pleading
for an answer to her question. The last
we see of her, she’s darting across the street,
heading west, and the day carries on
the way the country does, one thing
sweeping the next thing away.

*

Laundry After Loss

The worst thing is the gaping red hole no one can see,
not even me. I keep looking down, expecting a crater

the size of a dinner plate in the center of my chest.
The worst thing is that my heart keeps pumping

blood anyway. I’ve willed it to stop, or at least
slow down, but it won’t. Blood soaks my shirt,

makes the fabric stick so there can be no healing.
I have to keep changing my clothes. All I ever do

is laundry anymore. When the wash cycle’s done,
I don’t look. I just shove everything in the dryer,

set it to run for the maximum time. The worst thing
is when the dryer bell dings. Then I know

I have to fold the clothes. Then I have to see
how every shirt comes out perfectly clean.

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Brett Warren is the author of The Map of Unseen Things (Pine Row Press, 2023). She is a long-time editor whose poetry has appeared in Canary, The Comstock Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, Harbor Review, Hole in the Head Review, and many other publications. She lives in Massachusetts, in a house is surrounded by pitch pine and black oak trees—nighttime roosts of wild turkeys, who sometimes use the roof of her writing attic as a runway. brettwarrenpoetry.com

ONE ART’s 2024 Best of the Net nominations

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ONE ART’s 2024 Best of the Net nominations

Sandra Rivers-Gill – D’Anjou
Carol Boston – Great Lady Descending
Brett Warren – Origami of Shock
Sara Backer – After Fourteen Years
Tom Gengler – The Clinic Squares
John Amen – The 80s

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Congratulations to all our nominees!

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More information about Best of the Net here.

Origami of Shock by Brett Warren

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Origami of Shock

The first time was the worst: how graciously
he opened the door to welcome me in,

saying I had just missed them—the figurines
who like to run back and forth across the carpet.

How he made a little running motion
with his fingers, adding that if I’d come earlier,
I’d have seen a tiny version of myself

perched on the bookshelf among knick-knacks
and a fine layer of dust. How his eyes
kept darting over to see if I/she was still there.

How a life-sized version of me began to edge
toward the door, feeling my way along the wall
with my shoulder.

How I couldn’t take my eyes off him,
couldn’t break free from the terrible trance
of his smile. How the thing

that brought me back was my left hand,
which had been in my coat pocket

the whole time, folding a grocery list
into smaller and smaller squares.

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Brett Warren is the author of The Map of Unseen Things (forthcoming from Pine Row Press). She is a long-time editor whose poetry has appeared in Canary, The Comstock Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, Hole in the Head Review, Cape Cod Poetry Review, and many other publications. She lives in Massachusetts, in a house is surrounded by pitch pine and black oak trees—nighttime roosts of wild turkeys, who sometimes use the roof of her writing attic as a runway. brettwarrenpoetry.com