on Facebook told me
I most resembled Kim Gordon.
This was based on detailed questions:
"What time do you go to bed?"
"What is your ideal Saturday night?"
"When was the last time you vomited?"
It would have been better
to tell Facebook that I was living in the South Side
on Carson Street the summer Mike Ness
tore up Club Laga with his gruff vocals,
the same summer
Against All Authority
sold out every show,
leaving my heart empty on Forbes Avenue,
Beast in one hand, a Mike and Tony's gyro
in the other. But that was 1999,
the year Johnny wrecked his bike on the Slopes
and let the infection fester for three weeks,
the summer of no air conditioning
in that five-story house on Josephine Street,
and waking up to squatters
on the couch,
termites on the floor,
and Facebook wasn't even around then.
It didn't know enough to ask me
if I knew Kim Gordon,
or if I'd even heard of Sonic Youth,
or if I remembered
watching Bo's scabies
trace up and down his arms
as he slept in the front yard.
-- Kelly Scarff
Kelly Scarff lives in Greensburg, Pa., and works as a graphic designer. Her poems appear in Nerve Cowboy, Chiron Review, Pear Noir! and LABOR. Many writers featured in Chapter & Verse are guests of Prosody, produced by Jan Beatty and Ellen Wadey. Prosody airs every Tuesday at 7 p.m. on independent radio, WYEP 91.3 FM.
