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My Favorite Live Nude Poetry Book I Read in 2012

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By Rusty Barnes


It's Thomas Patrick Levy's Please Don't Leave Me Scarlett Johannson. 

Give it a purchase and a nice review somewhere. Here's why:


O Scarlett I couldn’t look you in the eyes at the diner because you were wearing your apron like a too-small bath towel and I just knew you had a blue Chevy S-10 in the parking lot and my god you were certainly the sexiest person I’ve ever seen carrying a slice of pie to a booth in the back room and even then I knew that you were not real but I kept wiping these drops of coffee off my chin and kept looking around as if there were someone other than you to look at and finally when I left you came after me moving in a rush that smelled of purple candy and when I turned around you were already in your truck and the radio was already moaning MY HEART IS IN MY SHOES and your small fingers were holding a cigarette out the open window and you left me alone with the spatter of wetness your truck’s exhaust left on the cement and I swear the spatter was in the shape of Tom Waits’s face

And Scarlett never mind the run-down motels I’ll drive all night and you can hang your pretty toes out the window while the shadows swallow around us and the only light for miles is the candle my car holds out before us with one hand covering the flame and god you know how I love to hear you sing even when you’re singing THEY BROKE ALL THE WINDOWS so please sing yourself to sleep and let that cold wind come around you like a hush kept so frail and when you get too cold we’ll park in the shadow of an evergreen and you can rest your body against my car’s warm hood

And Scarlett once I watched a man on youtube photoshop your body in reverse and the dress he made you wear I swear was made of thin orange threads of my sweat and I swear to god I couldn’t open my eyes but each frame touched me like the wet of your tongue which makes shapes that can’t exist around my ear and I swear to god sometimes I sleep and dream you don’t exist and when I wake up in your bed there is a veil draped down like an arc of wedding light burst through the ceiling and on the radio I hear your voice and on the radio I see the way you crawl around and I see your knees bare as yellow fields by the freeways and I see your knees crushed carrot-raw on wet hairs of carpet and still each frame is so dark I have to light a candle when we kiss



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