Three Poems -The Toast

Nicole Steinberg’s Getting Lucky, a collection of sonnets constructed entirely from editorial copy from Lucky Magazine, can soon be in your hands. These poems, however, have nothing to do with said august publication or its editorial copy. – Ed.

FMK

All those times I made the babysitter watch
Sleeping Beauty, I was preparing for this.
Ten hot ways to interrogate your man.
Charlotte from Sex and the City scribbling
“love” in lipstick on the bathroom mirror
like some kind of kook who’s got too many
mirrors. But kooks need the dirty love, too.
Abandoned bowls of cereal and milk
on a Philadelphia street corner tell a tale
of young lovers too blind with passion to finish
breakfast. Or maybe it’s just a filthy town.
Maybe we’re stinking up the place. Who cares
what you do with a man, or if he expires,
as long as you’re awake when it happens.

What I’m Doing With My Life

Dicking around. Not reading
the Times. Writing and ripping up
the long list of things I’ve survived.

Holding grudges against smells:
Lauren by Ralph Lauren, an ex’s body
soap. Refurbishing sickness as

tradition in the hope someone
will buy it. Crying in the laundry room.
Cutting checks. Mentally debating how

many slices of pizza to get. Raising
imaginary hell. Living on self-reward.
Never promising to pray for anyone.

Professional Development

A loose tooth on a first date
is a bad omen. They’ll use
your missing parts against you.
What we should all do is
enhance our knife skills.
Chiffonade our skirts. “Forget”
to pick up the kids after school
and let them find their way home.
Why should you? my therapist
often asks. My blood gets bent
on empowerment. I slip into
my pejorative pumps. I bang
on the piano until a crying
stranger makes me stop.

Nicole Steinberg is the author of Getting Lucky (Spooky Girlfriend Press) and a few poetry chapbooks, including Undressing (dancing girl press) and Clever Little Gang (Furniture Press). She lives in Philadelphia, where she spends too much time sifting through complicated feelings about Chris Pine.