Poetry By Stevie Edwards

Shaun Fisher CC





How to Quit Drinking

Delete social media apps from your phone. Better yet, turn off your phone. The news is full of reasons to drink: the stock market plummeting in response to excessive tariffs, Venezuelan men being disappeared to prison in El Salvador for having tattoos. Make an appointment for a new tattoo, a ring of daisies around your ankle to remind you of your dead dog, Daisy. Don’t think about your dead dog too much. Adopt a new dog who totters around smiling at the world, one who licks your face every morning before the to-do list begins to echo through your brain. Go to the bar with your husband and order a Diet Coke. Go to the bar with colleagues and order an overpriced mocktail. Order a nonalcoholic cider. Pretend you’re someone who can drink and smile. Remember the last time you drank, swallowing your own vomit the next morning to avoid spewing all over the car. Remember how you don’t really remember almost getting arrested at the liquor store for being disorderly. Try to create order. Go to an AA meeting the week before Christmas. Decide they talk about God too much. Decide you hate AA meetings but are glad they exist. Don’t go to the conference to see all your “friends” who don’t call or text you. Go vegan. Go green. Start composting your potato peels and onion skins. Get into yoga. Get into your body, the way it pulses and hums a song of pleasure. Get addicted to small pleasures. Get your nails done every two weeks. Oil your cuticles, lotion your shins. Take long baths with almond-scented Epsom salts. Get a face mask, a hair mask, a pumice stone that grinds your heels smooth. Buy yourself flowers once a week. Kiss your husband on the forehead. Kiss him again. 



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Ode to a Cheeseburger
​
I don’t remember the last cheeseburger I ate--
It was 4 am dumb drunk in a Kansas City diner
after a night of saxophones and trumpets
noodling the air with smooth jazz
and nourishing noise, after
an evening in my new blue blazer
reading poems about a ravenous hurting
that sunk its teeth into my bones
to a private dining room 
with free glasses of prosecco 
and crab cakes that I gobbled 
more than my fair share of
as a pescatarian with a penchant
for obliteration, my generous ass 
stuffed into a booth beside friends 
and strangers who were trying to live
on words. I don’t remember 
the cheeseburger, but I hope
it was juicy, the grease and ketchup
intermixing and dribbling
down my chin, which I inevitably
did not wipe quite often enough,
but my coven of newfound companions
who, like me, loved poetry 
and whiskey more than was good
for our livers, didn’t seem to mind. 
I don’t remember the people,
the crispiness of the french fries, 
the music, whether the bun 
had seeds of sesame or grill marks,
how many pickles. I did not consider
the yelping mammals in the slaughterhouse
or my cholesterol levels. I was distilled
to my wants: blood, salt, and poison.

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Stevie Edwards is an Assistant Professor at Clemson University and Poetry Editor of The South Carolina Review. She is the author of The
Weather Inside (University of Arkansas Press, 2026), Quiet Armor (Northwestern University Press, 2023), Sadness Workshop (Button Poetry, 2018), Humanly (Small Doggies Press, 2015), and Good Grief (Write Bloody Publishing, 2012). Originally a Michigander, she now lives in South Carolina with her spouse and a small herd of rescue pitbulls.