Alice Bolin

Yearbook

Yearbook

Bathrobe. The big girl leads the band. She is our leader, she kneels to us, there is a certain slapping in her big forearms. Boiling soymilk bath and instant coffee. Hello woodwinds, hop in.



She steeps in shells of our string meat, the big sweet acorn squashes. Pray, slit a high school oil painting—it sucks up so. It embarrasses. Pull its canvas to a big bonnet, and her head blanches and rolls like our band's big timpani.



How's that shiner. The terrycloth tobacco-stricken. The motel bed, big girl in her bathrobe. She empties spent cigarettes in her pocket.



Sadly, sadly, the motel room wilts. Ice in the rosewater: when it melts, it is tap water, and it is cold. She invites us for a fondue of furnace spittle. The big girl. Pray, hot wax treatment, pull blue salt across the leg. Uncross 'em.



Those whores. Our oboe reeds litter the alley. Leak saliva on the yearbook and don't ask questions. The painter's nest spit-burned and choked in apple, the big suckling pig.



Just so, release the spit valve. Come drunk from the billiard room and don't ask questions. How's that shiner. Still life with big girl and pool cue.