Noralee Zwick




and so you’ll be Americans; your hair buzzed short,
your girl’s straw-yellow, down and swinging. You’ll get her
only an hour in. It’ll be a freewayside confession, something loud and defiant; you, swooping her out of the way of the wheels. Baby, baby,
you’ll say, your voice rasping around the words.
You kiss her in the junkyard, her fingers catching loose on
whatever’s left of your hair. Baby, baby. Her voice, low and urgent
against a field pitch-black. She asks you there to tell her your backstory.
You say you cut your hair in the bathroom sink. You say
your cigarettes don’t kill. You dance when you drink. Girls from all over
forget your face; their lipstick smeared over your cheeks, your lips,
your eyes a blur, your neck strained up. They peel your arms down
from across your chest, and when they look, they call you baby, fuck,
they call you everything. In your backstory,
you don’t miss the signals. You catch them every time.
You catch her when she goes barrelling down the open highway;
when she laughs, straw-yellow scattered everywhere, everywhere,
dancing wide open in your parked headlight beams.
Go on and tell her mouth everything you’ve wanted to. It’ll run chorus-like.
You, reciting her the safety manual that came with your car,
murmuring each warning half-melted into her ear. Tell me you love me,
she insists, don’t you say it if it isn’t real. You, heavy on her shoulder,
giggling it out: don’t drive if you’re under the influence. If you’re
too angry to see. Baby, baby. When the time comes,
tell her you’ll put down the gun. Tell her you’ll take her
somewhere wild where the horizon juts from the seams.
Someplace without endless pressure on your torso. Where she is bright,
of course she is, but the lightbulbs are everywhere. Fluorescent, blinding. Someplace temporary, baby, or nowhere at all.





Noralee Zwick is a student and poet based in the Bay Area, California. A California Arts Scholar and Iowa Young Writers Studio alumnus, their work can be found or forthcoming in Fleeting Daze Review, Dishsoap Quarterly, and Eucalyptus Lit, among others. Find them on Instagram at @noraleewrites.