Drive Here and Devastate Me

By Megan Falley

Megan Falley’s much-anticipated fourth collection of poetry shocks you with its honesty: whether through exacting wit or lush lyrical imagery.
It is clear that the author is madly in love, not only with her partner for whom she writes both idiosyncratic and sultry poems for, but in love with language, in love with queerness, in love with the therapeutic process of bankrupting the politics of shame. These poems tackle gun violence, toxic masculinity, LGBTQ* struggles, suicidality, and the oppression of women’s bodies, while maintaining a vivid wildness that the tongue aches to speak aloud. Known best for breathtaking last lines and truths that will bowl you over, Drive Here and Devastate Me will “relinquish you from the possibility of meeting who you could have been, and regretting who you became.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Write Bloody Publishing
• Release date: Sep 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781935904427

Book preview

Author

I.

GRIEF

CARTOGRAPHER

IF YOU REALLY WANT TO RUIN ME

finish your film with a flashback scene.

Before that, something must end,

preferably with death, but heartbreak

will do.

The flashback should be of a scene so early on

I’ve forgotten it: one that stings more in new context,

the way a cut burns better in all the right water.

Bonus if there’s a carnival or carousel. Bonus

if the memory includes footage

not seen before, even a kiss, shot

at a new angle, as if seen by a bird

or dead thing. I am ruined more

by scenes in reverse: the body unfolds,

stands up from its wheelchair and walks

back into the arms of its love, who is young

and at a party, as if seeing her were the cure

for paralysis, or the girl pulls the gun

from her temple, which makes her love

undrink the poison. O show me

how it was before. O show me how

it could have been if we moved backwards

instead. Take my hand and drag me

through the garden of every step that led to this

impossible here. Rewind, watch you take

all my dresses, like flattened girls,

off the floor and hang them

back in the closet, as if we’re moving in

together again. The saltwater scaling my cheeks

and sneaking in through the windows of my whitening eyes

until I’m smiling in your face

that has never, and will never

break me.

APARTMENT SWEET APARTMENT

We must be doing something right

if, after a vacation, the only place I want to be

is the tiny island of our Brooklyn apartment:

overheated and too expensive and ours.

The familiar whiff of cat shit upon entering

because there was no other spot for the litter box.

The questionable expiration dates in our fridge.

Our fridge—I still like the way it sounds.

The windows that don’t lock,

the neighbor’s kitten who sometimes sneaks in

to our living room when we forget

about the fire escape. The fire escape.

Too many books bending the shelves,

and more, stacked on unused chairs.

Our old, loyal dog. Our full-sized bed

and the jar of shiny money

saving up to buy us a queen.

I know that every rent check mailed

is a promise. Every split grocery bill

says, I will be here tomorrow. I will save you

half of this perfect grapefruit.

Every time we complain

about the cost of this city

but don’t leave, we are saying,

Worse comes to worst, I will eat ramen noodles

from the bowls of your hands.

WHEN IT ENDED

You say you don’t think it would help to pinpoint the exact moment we fell out of love, but you know me: grief cartographer, plotting the coordinates of loss. Maybe it was the first time one of us needed to buy kitty litter, or toilet paper, or Drano to fish me back out of the sink. Maybe it was in our first apartment, fingers on a calculator, trying to split the electric bill down to the degree of heat. But I remember each breakfast we prepared as if it were a nursery for a new child. I remember dyeing each other’s hair the same boxed blonde. Maybe it was around the time you decided I must know I am pretty, wouldn’t look up from your phone as I took off my shirt and how quickly I got over my jealousy of Twitter, or Candy Crush, or whatever shiny thing you were looking at instead. But I remember when you got a mandolin and we started our own two-piece band, our only audience––the roaches in the wall. Maybe it was halfway through the series of Gilmore Girls or Game of Thrones or House of Cards or Friends or Bob’s Burgers or Dexter or Girls or Arrested Development or 30 Rock or Broad City or Six Feet Under or any of the shows we watched to distract ourselves from the fact that we shoved our sex in a time capsule and forgot where we buried it. Maybe it was when you took the overnight job and I got so used to the wideness of the bed that my arms grew like they were reaching for new people. Maybe it was all those parties I lingered at like smoke in the hair as you tugged on my sleeve and begged me home. But I remember our own secret language, how we could spend entire