Bobby Hasn't Eaten in Three Days
BY MICHAEL MLEKODAY
I tell my students to start with that line
and see what happens, find out
what their skulls are good for.
I’m thinking of Bobby Sands,
of course, but they don’t know
history, they can’t even tell me
who Chuck D is, though they’ve all
watched Flavor of Love
with varying degrees of allegro.
One of them says Bobby
is between jobs. Too many
of them say anorexia nervosa
like they know what it means
to bake a fat, sweet cake
and serve it all to their older sisters,
watching every bite like a firework.
I’m surprised when one says
that he doesn’t know Bobby
and then writes something unrelated,
a poem about mountaintop removal.
Why not name the mountain
Bobby, I want to ask,
but that would be a stupid name
for a mountain, right?
My friend Bobby Weekend,
who I named years ago,
calls me later in the day
and says he’s three months clean,
he’s not even thirsty anymore,
and I say good. I don’t tell him
that he will be, again. He knows.
His nickname almost didn’t stick
because one day, drunk,
he climbed on top of a moving car
and fractured his skull
on the windshield, and everybody
started calling him Bobby Windshield,
and we thought it was funny,
back then. It’s not like we called him
Bobby Nightstick, or Bobby Overdose,
or Bobby Heartbreak. It’s not like
he didn’t laugh a goon’s laugh
and piss his new name off the roof.
I tell my students to start with that line
and see what happens, find out
what their skulls are good for.
I’m thinking of Bobby Sands,
of course, but they don’t know
history, they can’t even tell me
who Chuck D is, though they’ve all
watched Flavor of Love
with varying degrees of allegro.
One of them says Bobby
is between jobs. Too many
of them say anorexia nervosa
like they know what it means
to bake a fat, sweet cake
and serve it all to their older sisters,
watching every bite like a firework.
I’m surprised when one says
that he doesn’t know Bobby
and then writes something unrelated,
a poem about mountaintop removal.
Why not name the mountain
Bobby, I want to ask,
but that would be a stupid name
for a mountain, right?
My friend Bobby Weekend,
who I named years ago,
calls me later in the day
and says he’s three months clean,
he’s not even thirsty anymore,
and I say good. I don’t tell him
that he will be, again. He knows.
His nickname almost didn’t stick
because one day, drunk,
he climbed on top of a moving car
and fractured his skull
on the windshield, and everybody
started calling him Bobby Windshield,
and we thought it was funny,
back then. It’s not like we called him
Bobby Nightstick, or Bobby Overdose,
or Bobby Heartbreak. It’s not like
he didn’t laugh a goon’s laugh
and piss his new name off the roof.
Michael Mlekoday is an MFA candidate at Indiana University and a National Poetry Slam Champion. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ninth Letter, Hayden's Ferry Review, Sixth Finch, Anti-, and other journals. He has never seen the ocean.