New Math

By Brendan Constantine



Once I asked
myself out
on a date.

Lunch, nothing
big. I had to
say, No.

It wasn’t that I
didn’t like me.
I do.

Just not that way.

I took it hard.
That night
I dialed

my number ten
times. It was
always busy.

I must have been
screening my
calls.

Who can blame me?

But, it’s all right
now, because
I’m friends.

The only time it’s
at all awkward
is in public,

when strange men
approach me
and say,

Excuse me, are you sisters?



From the forthcoming book, Calamity Joe


Brendan Constantine is a poet based in Hollywood. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, FIELD, Runes, The Los Ahgeles Review, ArtLife, Ninth Letter and other journals. His most recent collection is Birthday Girl Wit Possum, (2011 Write Bloody Press). New poems are forthcoming in the journals Pilgrimage, Askew, & Poemeleon. Brendan is currently poet-in-residence at the Windward School and Loyola Marymount University Extension in west Los Angeles.

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