first pages of the beautifully worthless

7/29/2019 First Pages of The Beautifully Worthless

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Sister Spit: Writing, Rants and Reminiscence rom the Road

Edited by Michelle ea

Cha Ching!By Ali Liebegott

:

Yokohama TreewayBy Beth Lisick


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THEBEAUTIFULLYWORTHLESS


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THEBEAUTIFULLY

WORTHLESS

Ali Liebegott

San Francisco


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Copyright by Ali Liebegott

All Rights Reserved

Cover photograph Alison Kelly

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Portions o Te Beautiully Worthless were inspired by the poems o Pablo

Neruda, Christopher Smart, Dante, Emily Dickinson, Adrienne Rich, and

Larry Levis. Tanks to Greg Wharton and Ian Phillips or first publishing

this manuscript in 2005 on Suspect Toughts Press. Deep gratitude goes to

City Lights/Sister Spit Press and Michelle ea or giving this book another

lie. Parts o this manuscript first appeared in Lodestar Quarterly,Bloom,Solo,

Art/Lie,and Blood and ears: Poems or Matthew Shepard.Tank you BethPickens, or all your love and support.

Library o Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Liebegott, Ali.

[Poems. Selections]

Te beautiully worthless / Ali Liebegott. pages cm. (City lights/sister spit)

ISBN ----

. Young womenPoetry. . LesbiansPoetry. . Women travelers

Poetry. . WaitressesPoetry. I. itle.

PS.IB

'.dc

City Lights Books are published at the City Lights Bookstore

Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA

www.citylights.com


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In memory o Deborah Digges

and Adrienne Rich

and Rorschach

R.I.P.


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BROOKLYNTOCAMUS


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But you were young, and you had

Plenty o time:

Going west,

You slept with your mouth open.

You were nothing,You were snow alling through the ribs

o the dead.

You were all I had.

Larry Levis, rom Te Spirit Says, You Are

Nothing


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Sometime in October

When I packed up the old place I didnt want to throw anything out

because I wasnt sure where my birth certificate was and I didnthave time to look or itso I dumped everything into boxes, trash

bags and pillowcases. Te matchbooks and pennies came romshaking the top drawer o a kitchen cabinet into a box. When I livedin Yonkers and was the brokest Ive ever been in my lie, those pen-nies saved me a couple timesbought me coffee at 7-11, and once Ididnt have enough pennies on my lunch break rom the pet supplystore to get a kids burger at McDonalds, so I hid in the warehousebehind the stacks o kitty litter and ate the staff donuts. By the third

jelly donut my head was spinning. Te rest o my boxes were filledwith eighty percent trashdirty Q-tips and coffee-stained napkins.Tere were matchbooks rom bars I had gone to five years and 3,000miles ago. Everything I own could fit in the back o a pickup truck,but three out o ten boxes are filled with matchbooks and dirty Q-tips. I want things to be different in this apartment, but I dont know

where to begin. So or now, I dumped all the matchbooks and pen-nies in a duffel bag and put it under the bed.


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Still October, Still Sad

I cant stop dwelling on the act that I moved a box filled with match-

books and pennies. I wrote down on a slip o paper, matchbooks,pennies and hung it on the wall so I wouldnt orget that I packed

up the trash in my lie and moved it with me to a new apartment.I could knit a sweater out o all the dog hair on the floor. Oncemy nonsmoking art teacher told me one o her students painted themost beautiul ashtray. She said, Now someone who can make anashtray look beautiul is a talented artist.


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One Year Later

I had to take everything off my walls, all the newspaper clippings

about people being bitten to death by rats and cures or gay dogs. Ipulled down the paper that said, matchbooks, pennies too. Ill do

anything to stop being depressed. I could be like those people whobuild bombs out o horseshit and plastic pipes. Te women in jailtold me how they light their cigarettes off the spark rom rubbinga Brillo pad on a battery. And when a child gets trapped under acar, theres always a rail mother powered by rantic adrenaline whomanages to lif the car off the ground with her bare hands. People

fight diseases every day. Who gets to live a happy lie, who gets bornwith a brain that works, its so random, right? Youre either destinedto be a heroin addict or an accountantyou cant predict or pre-

pare or lie.


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I wish somewhere buried under eet and eet o dirtanswers or the unanswerable slept sae and unharmed

just as the heart o the penny dangles, drunk and teeming

unnoticed to most, inside the copper-green edges o itsdecomposition.

And I wish one night I could dream the name o this townwhere dirt shrines hope or the desperate,where the pine-needled ground shifs and fidgetsthis place that has waited years or me to plungethe straightedge o a spade into its dirt belly

and birth the gifs it has kept so long.

And the gifs, i ever unearthed, and I could stand beore themtheir sight would hang my hand midair over my mouthbeore I would be brave enough to pick the first one upa tiny glass bottle filled with oil, that when droppedone drop at a time, could turn the insignificant into significant,

change the blank inside o a matchbookinto the most sacred diary, and a dirty pennyinto a tool to count the dead.

I I did dream the name o a town that could save my liethen the next morning Id wake high on adrenaline,run to the drawer in the kitchen where the maps are keptand stand stiff in ront o the atlas when I realized

the name o the town I dreamt was beore me in the index.

Araid o a dream that seemed more like a prophecy,Id lower mysel slowly, inch by inch, downonto the couch covered in dog hair, and sit there stunneduntil the cigarette in my hand burned to my knuckles.

Only then would I rise to pack a small bag o belongings, snapthe light shut in the living room and rush my dog, Rorschachout o the house and into the truck. I would tell no onewhere I was going in case it proved a bust, only leaving a shortnote on the kitchen table or my girlriend that said,


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Dear Lamby,

Last night I dreamt o a place where sadness could be ripped in hal,and sickness, tied idly in knots all day. Tere were signs everywhere

that said, Camus, Idaho. When I woke up I wanted to see i Camuswas a real town so I looked it up in the atlas and there it was. Iknow this sounds crazy, but I have to go and find out i theres any-thing there that can help me make sense o this world.

xoxox

P.S. I took Rorschach.


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Its not just that I dreamt the name o a place

that housed books filled with lost equations

to explain the mundane and the heinous,but it was the actual way I flew through spacethat urged me to believe in the town I went to that night.

It wasnt the normal kind o dream flyingwhere, in the middle o panic and heart-pounding retreat,I remember I can fly, and get a running start and do itno, I flew too ast to be alive, awake or dreaming,

and I was scared Id been taken, angel hands under eacho my arms, and lifed off somewhere I never believed in.

I it was true that I died that night when I ell asleepthen death elt good, like I was in a citywhere no one walked or took the subway.Instead we all took armstrokes the lengths o our bodies

and pushed the velvet edges o water downrom our heads to our hips. We were all dead, swimmingunderwater, euphoric and silent in an aferlie public city pool.

While I swam through space, me and everyone around memoved with the undeniable giddiness o being high or about to

come.It was that eeling o how your body gets abducted inch by inch

nerve by nerve, until finally afer burning and wantand want the white sheet gets thrown over your brain,

like its a chair in a mansion, during the months no ones there.

Regardless, it was the good kind o deadlike i a lucky ewstumbled upon a cave in the middle o their rainy, jobless city,but not just the luck o finding the cave, but the wordthat doesnt exist or what goes beyond luck,when around one wet and dripping cave cornertheir eet stop short, and they see a blue-green poolcupped in cave-hands, and held out to them.


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Dear Lamby,

Saw this cute diner so I pulled over or a bite to eat. Inside, I hadthis eeling I was being watched. When I turned my head I saw these

truckers glaring at me.

Ever heard o a town in Idaho called Camus? I asked the waitress.

Ive never been to Idaho, she said.

I glanced over my shoulder one last time, then lef a big tip anddrove off beore the truckers could get me.

xoxox


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Te next night, the chest-high bricks o a wellsat across a field rom me, I walked over, looked downand dropped parts o mysel, knowing I would drink

them again somedaywhat Im saying is,I wrapped mysel in maple leaves, tossed myseltoward cleaner water and broke my own surace.

Its not always like this, the dreamsstrange and poeticholy and calm. Last night it was a bar where sleazy men pushedhundred-dollar bills down my dresseveryone laughed,lets leave, I kept saying,

but my girlriend wanted to stay,so in my rustration, I broke a pint glasson the bar and swung the jagged edge at my wrist,the blood paused a moment beore it spilled out the white gash,and like always, beore I swing a broken glass at my arm,

theres a moment where I hesitate,not really wanting to.

So you can understand a little better,how a disgruntled waitress might pack her dogand ew belongings and head or a townshe dreamed the name o, searching or something to breakthe spell o monotonous, morbid night speak.

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