This Past Week I Spent More Money on Plates Than I Ever Have

A secret beach of junkyards led me here. Taking the ferry to New Jersey,

making a list of things to do: Dinner parties, sitting on the balcony with a croissant,

serving cheese. I want to eat off of something beautiful.

Touching the ceramic cranes set in the round Taos-colored clay. The plates came

from Facebook Marketplace. A website for other people. I deactivated twice.

Something always draws me back. The allure of wedding flowers. A holiday in

a foreign country with a new lover. A thinly-ambiguous shit post about strangers.

Harmless gossip. Through the junkyard, weaving past bored birds in too much sunshine,

came the plates. Next to Aphrodite busts, fountains that no longer trickle water, rubber tires.

An adequate box, iced coffee-colored and desert-dusted. Plates. Cranes, plucking

at their own feathers, terracotta suns that never fully burn, gilded lilies with verdant pads or

lanky stems. I want to eat off of something beautiful. We all deserve the magnitude of beauty.

Fifty dollars down and the box is mine. Carried home on waves. All good things.

Hollywood

Baby, did you hear me?

I’m packing my bags.

To drown in crushed

blue velvet hoping

I’m lucky in love.

I’d love to be

that bottle of Coca-Cola

you drink and leave

on the table.

It’s my big break.

Stephanie Valente is a poet, copywriter, and the author of the collection Internet Girlfriend, published by Clash Books. She is at work on a novel. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. stephanievalente.com