Two Poems by Adrienne Marie Barrios & Leigh Chadwick
Associate editor Heath Joseph Wooten on today’s bonus poem: These two poems from Adrienne Marie Barrios and Leigh Chadwick simultaneously navigate currents of absurdity and fresh imagistic territory. Line-by-line, you will either be laughing or left breathless by Barrios' and Chadwick's sharp associative turns. These are poems you'll tell your friends about, that you'll remember with shocking clarity in the middle of the night, before digging back in for another read.
A Ghost Dressed in Memory Foam
Adrienne Barrios sees the most beautiful person she has ever seen, and she wonders if beauty is finite. She wants to ask the most beautiful person she has ever seen if each time a cell flakes off and falls to the floor, does a star on the other side of a black hole weep? She wants to tell him, You are only less beautiful when I blink. She asks Leigh Chadwick, Does beauty start at birth, or are we all imaginary? Leigh Chadwick doesn’t know how to answer questions that aren’t about Leigh Chadwick. Adrienne Barrios spends the afternoon donating her emotions to charity while Leigh Chadwick adjuncts at the community college, teaching a course on how to sleep in sorrow. To drain weather. To scrape hieroglyphs off a cave wall. To waste the morning licking sweat off a chest. Adrienne Barrios tells the cashier at Wegman’s that she is in love with love. Leigh Chadwick grows shoulders on her wings. Adrienne Barrios admits to her therapist that she has never driven a monster truck. Leigh Chadwick lets the ghosts tuck her into bed. Every night she has a recurring dream where she is crushed by a pile of contributor copies. In the morning, while eating a bowl of Lucky Charms, Leigh Chadwick reads an article in the New York Times that states the best way to not get shot by a bullet is to duck. Every morning Adrienne Barrios looks in her bathroom mirror and says, Maybe I want to live forever. She never knows which is more true, the maybe or the want.
Down the Road, to the Left
Today’s forecast calls for a 37% probability of making out on a wooden roller coaster, but Adrienne Barrios can only find wooden floors. Whenever Leigh Chadwick leaves the house, she always forgets her better self at home. Adrienne Barrios thinks better selves are like soul mates. She doesn’t have one. She wonders if she can order one off Amazon or if this is it. It is hard to tell these things and there is no one to ask. Last night Leigh Chadwick dreamt she was crushed by a pile of contributor copies. She spends the following afternoon trying to fit more poems into her poems while her daughter teaches race cars how to crawl. She sends a poem to Adrienne Barrios and asks, Do you think this poem is a poem or a lie or the feeling of gravity on your shins? Adrienne Barrios is too busy selling real estate on Reservoir Road to read the poem, but Leigh Chadwick doesn’t mind. Leigh Chadwick understands there are bears and there are bears with claws and that every line goes somewhere even if it ends up nowhere. Leigh Chadwick is always the second puff in puff, puff, pass. Instead of getting an MFA, Leigh Chadwick asks the moon, Do commercials ever make you cry? A song goes, When there is nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire. Leigh Chadwick pretends to be Leigh Chadwick. The lemonade has lost its melody. A piano is thrown against a wall. A bird is evicted from its birdhouse. A few blocks from Reservoir Road, a train stops on the tracks and says, I don’t think I can. The moon goes deaf. The train packs up its coal and goes home.
Leigh Chadwick is the author of the poetry collection Wound Channels (ELJ Editions 2022). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Salamander, Milk Candy Review, HAD, Indianapolis Review, and ONE ART, among others. She is a regular contributor at Olney Magazine, where she conducts the “Mediocre Conversations” interview series. Find her on Twitter at @LeighChadwick5.
Adrienne Marie Barrios has work forthcoming in superfroot mag, Autofocus Lit, and Sledgehammer Lit. She is editor-in-chief of Reservoir Road Literary Review and edits short stories and award-winning novels. Find her online at adriennemariebarrios.com.
