Songs for Rejecting Boys at Parties
Ashley-Elizabeth Best is from Cobourg. She was on the poetry shortlist for the 2011 Matrix Litpop Awards and Prism’s Poetry Prize 2012. She has poetry appearing in The Toronto Quarterly, Tampa Review, CV2, and Branch Magazine. She recently placed first for poetry in This Magazine’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt 2012 and was the poetry runner up for subTerrain Magazine’s Lush Literary Awards 2012. She has a chapbook published with Cactus Press called Slow States of Collapse. Currently, she lives and writes in Kingston.
1. “Don’t Call Me No Mo” (Project Pat)
Your hollering can be heard from the texts you exile to my phone. My inbox has become an archive of confessions. I pipe up at the party, see you across the room, throw aside my cigarette, ask you to step outside.
2. “Never Gonna Happen” (Lily Allen)
When we first met the stars were snowing down, my flesh showing openly all I had yet to lose. The music is jackhammering behind me. We haven’t touched in weeks, I’m trimming back across the lawn, the voltage from your smirk more than I can bear. I’m the only sobbing witness, finally ready to extinguish the fires of our worship.
3. “Cold Hearted” (Paula Abdul)
His lust detonates through the party, we both refuse to lose ground. The longer I avoid his eyes, the more he lacerates my body, his friends’ laughter slicing through the music.
4. “Shut Up and Let Me Go” (The Ting Tings)
Hunched over the deck railing, my shadow form laying down the excitement I once had for you, like the shudder of steel. Love is a thin artery, incomprehensible in its leaving.
Ashley-Elizabeth Best is from Cobourg. She was on the poetry shortlist for the 2011 Matrix Litpop Awards and Prism’s Poetry Prize 2012. She has poetry appearing in The Toronto Quarterly, Tampa Review, CV2, and Branch Magazine. She recently placed first for poetry in This Magazine’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt 2012 and was the poetry runner up for subTerrain Magazine’s Lush Literary Awards 2012. She has a chapbook published with Cactus Press called Slow States of Collapse. Currently, she lives and writes in Kingston.