Cherry Bobbers
Alison Henderson
Desi is seventeen
the way a dog is seventeen.
Desi, desired,
gets fed for free.
This week: half a pack of Marlboros,
a bomber jacket, two pairs of jeans
worn loose and cinched with chains.
Black and silver belts
rattle like dice when she moves,
rattle the floorboards when she walks,
patrolling her territory in black platforms.
Desi hangs around the Venice Skate Park
but doesn’t skate.
Older men dart toward her like fish
to cherry bobbers, drawn by her glossy hair—
red and black split down the middle.
One side of her face glows.
Hibiscus in the salt air.
But the men are bloodthirsty
and blind to flowers.
They prey on bad posture, press-on nails,
ask teenagers for contacts in the music industry.
She takes their numbers anyway,
then tells them to fuck off.
Desi hunts first looks, double-takes,
saves numbers she’ll never use,
collecting versions of herself
in her phone.
By sundown
her eyeliner has smudged
past the way she likes it.
She wipes it off
in the dark window of a Lexus,
deletes three photos,
keeps one.
At the meeting
Desi breaks the silence too honestly.
The woman beside her shifts in her seat.
Desi twists split ends while sharing,
wonders aloud if she could become
her own higher power.
When it’s over, Desi
chats and stacks the tired chairs.
Five high, she tells the newcomer
in a voice she’s never heard.
There’s a vape on a shelf,
but she does not take it—
holds the hunger in her throat
like glass marbles.
In the parking lot,
Desi shoves her phone away,
thanks the speaker,
asks about her tattoos.
Studies her bare smile.
Then folds into the backseat of the van
to DJ from backstage,
cranking metal like she’s in a fight with God.
Besides, God loves metal.
Alison Henderson is a queer poet from Montreal, based in Los Angeles. A proud university dropout. Her writing is part documentary, part embodied realism—inspired by landscapes of recovery, mental health, and consciousness, and by the small moments of grace that happen in parking lots and folding-chair rooms. She is preoccupied with non-duality, ontology, and what it means to be real.