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“Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want” • The Smiths (by Marissa DeSantis)


You are a tourist

bug-bitten,

sleepless,

back dripping with sweat.

An uninvited percussionist beating centuries of brick road

with a fifty dollar rolling suitcase

and you stumble across a Roa mural

and you order meatballs and Kriek

and every sentence starts with

“sorry.”


And later two Belgian hippies chant

and drag their pale rice paper wrists

across the rims of Tibetan bowls.

Nobody’s speaking

and the candlelight pulls beads of condensation

from your tulip.

The girls sing a Smiths song

as their blonde boy dutifully strums an electric guitar.


Knuckles tighten on your thigh.

You feel warm like you’ve been bathed in red light

and like if you were disposable

this is where you’d want to be cast aside,

rumpled and blown through alleys

bobbing aimlessly in whichever canal,

flicked into the mouth

of a bottle of Polar,

snuffed between two licked fingers,

bussed and rattled into a dumpster out back

with a cathedral view

where two beautiful Belgian girls share a joint

and exhale in perfect harmony.



Marissa DeSantis is a Cleveland-based writer of stories and poetry. They perform regularly with the improv and storytelling show "This Improvised Life" and with storytelling show "Story Club Cleveland." They spin holiday vinyl seasonally as DJ Misfit Toy.

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