Amber Tamblyn
Laurel Gene
Shave off the sheets of my songless childhood success,
expose the rotted age of me now―
My toothless breasts, my hips like a cracked Texas cow skull
hanging crooked on the butcher’s wall.
Remember what I once was.
The laurels of the Gene name.
My boom impact on the Baby Generation.
My pre-pubescent niche pizzazz.
Remember how the phone threw offers
for Little Jenny Sues into my Father’s ear.
He’d suck the bucks out of the cord like a straw into a spectrogram.
I never got a single sip.
I was his dark sparkler. A tarantula on fire.
An innocent with apple juice eyes and a brain
full of famished birds.
I used to play characters. Now I am portrayed.
As a dull domestic darling. A 30 year old 80 year old.
My husband’s office phone rescinds in silence. The only offers
are from the sink’s silverfish to kill them.
When I vacuum I think of Ingmar Bergman
fucking me from behind. I open
like the palms of Julius Cesar to a crowd.
Men used to rearrange their months to fit my seasons.
I suck a finger then the caldron in his tip.
He films my apron sticking to the sweat.
Makes this bad heart a pulse from the sky.
I am a distant explosion of myself again. A star.
Remember being a star.
This is how to die in the arms of a suburban wind,
learning how to be forgotten
over and over again.
Amber Tamblyn is a Venice, California native. She has been a writer and actress since the age of 9. She has been nominated for an Emmy, Golden Globe and Independent Spirit Award for her work in television and film. In 2005 Simon & Schuster published her debut collection of poetry, Free Stallion. Her second book of poetry and prose Bang Ditto (Manic D. Press) was released in the Fall of 2009. She is the creator of the annual poetry series, The Drums Inside Your Chest in Los Angeles and co-founded the nonprofit, Write Now Poetry Society with poet Mindy Nettifee. Currently, she writes for The Poetry Foundation and is a poetry book review column in Bust Magazine. Her next book is a collection of persona poems accompanied by portrait paintings by Marilyn Manson about child star actresses who grew up and died virtual unknowns. She lives in New York City with her betrothed, comedian David Cross.
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