County Fair / Goodbye, Hollywood
by Matt Mitchell
County Fair
tell me how all of my high school crushes are getting married.
how the woman I thought I loved is getting married tomorrow.
if what Meat Loaf said is true, and we’re damned if we get out
and damned if we don’t,
let me spend the rest of what time I have left at the county fair.
because I miss it. I miss the big ride they rented
from an amusement park in Columbus.
one so big I cannot remember its name.
an ex-turned-Instagram-follower rode it once.
she told me you could touch the moon once you reached the top.
I suspect there is a big forgotten
amusement park ride on every moon.
summers are nothing but weddings now.
remember when summers were fireworks
in every inch of sky.
our own rain of comets.
museums of color dancing against hollow air.
I watch fireworks and finally understand
how every star I cannot touch eventually dies.
what happened to making out by the chained-link fence
protecting the Apollo 11 replica downtown?
when we broke up with our lovers
in the McDonald’s parking lot.
our mouths full of other mouths,
teeth stained orange from Hi-C.
it is true: I don’t know what the word
heartbreak sounds like coming from a dying mouth,
but I do know I have never been brave enough
to go on an amusement park ride.
I have never been brave enough to touch the stars.
maybe I could have married them.
Goodbye, Hollywood
the feeling of oregon breeze eclipsing
through blonded hair hits different
when the postal service
is going out of business.
i am giving up on the neon,
because we are getting married soon.
i am giving up on the cowboys
and all the other reckless bodies.
because you can only call yourself
so many things
before you become
all of those things.
and i have spent so many poems
trying to call myself manly.
my body your spectacle,
your metaphor.
and haven’t i metaphor’d enough?
because nothing is more manly
than a lightning bug
autochthonous in its light.
baby, today’s gender is
inspecting every inch of sky.
you know how it goes:
teeth, clouds, teeth, apocalypse, moon.
but let’s stop talking about bodies
for a moment,
because we are getting married soon.
and it’s hot girl summer.
and the house i live in
is finally beneath sea level,
and the postal service
is going out of business.
i am obsessed with letting go,
obsessed with all that we’ve forgotten.
like dio-era black sabbath, crystal pepsi,
commemorative stamps.
i saw the moon yesterday.
it made me think
of that richard brautigan poem
about catfishes,
the one about how he wanted
to become someone’s catfish friend
under an evening moon.
we are getting married soon,
and we will become catfishes together
and live forever in a beautiful pond
behind my boyhood home,
under a hot girl summer moon
calid in its swimsuit-colored dust.
but before we get married,
i have to blow up my father’s car.
live for a second, in the ash
and the mud
and the continental divide
of chevrolet pinstripes.
i am running out of words,
i promise, i will explain later.
but right now, while i’ve got you,
we need a book of stamps.
Matt Mitchell is a gluten-free, heartbroken, intersex writer from Columbus, Ohio. He is the author of The Neon Hollywood Cowboy (Big Lucks, 2021). Find him on Twitter @matt_mitchell48.
