Bleed Almond

Bleed Almond: Poetry Before Trump

BLEED ALMOND: POETRY BEFORE TRUMP

Public domain text by Andrea Lambert

Lost Angelene Books

First Edition:

Second Edition:

All rights reserved

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13 : 978-0-9903394-3-4

Cover design by: Andrea Lambert

Printed in the United States of America

Previously Published Work:

"Slap Yourself" The Bantu Chronicles, 1995

"Generic Butch-Femme Poem," "Aalpha Pharmacy Waiting Dirge," "The Ballad of Student Loan Default," The L.A. Telephone Book Vol 1, 2011-2012, 2012

"Generic Butch-Femme Poem," Off the Rocks Volume #16: An Anthology of GLBT Writing, NewTown Writers Press, 2012

"Bonnie Brae, You Slut!" Ready, Able, valeveil, 2012

"The Window at Night," Queer Mental Health, 2012

"Invocation," Writing the Walls Down: A Convergence of LGBT*Q Voices, Trans-Genre Press, 2016.

"Why I Don't Go Outside," "Inevitable," "Waterproof Mascara," "Prison Tattoos," Five:2:One Magazine, 2016

"Just Couldn't Build Your White Picket Fences," Angel's Flight Literary West, 2016

"Nocturne," "Old Wounds, Freeways and Things that are Not," apt, 2016

"Just Couldn't Build Your White Picket Fences by Andrea Lambert," Angels' Flight Literary West, 2016

"Sayonara, Los Angeles by Andrea Lambert," Angel's Flight Literary West, 2016

Slap Yourself

So, my nicotine darling,

I slapped myself when I looked at you,

Downtown slapped between concrete and catwalks you

Were sauntering with hands wound in your shirt,

Distant in dark lenses

That filter out sense,

Stringing along a slide of lines that fall back

To telling nothing. I would

Never tell on you.

Driving past wet pines

You counted out your childhood in small bites like pennies,

Then closed back into drones of power chords, not

Caught.

You slip from couch to couch to sidewalk,

Know the secrets of cigarette butts and

Bottles smashed in the balconies,

Know the scratches of a record and a roadmap,

Know how many food stamps are left in your pocket,

And how easy it is to scam.

You get along. And me, I

Look again because I've known this before, known it well,