On Edge
Alas, the slam poet gives us a rollicking set of skilled, inspired, edgy poems, but for her encore she chooses a tired meme. “Don’t use that bong, beer or Prozac to take the edge off, because life must be lived at the edge!” Yeah, yeah. I’m pissed off that her body works fine and she can’t imagine anyone less fortunate than she is, anyone not a vegetarian who “hasn’t had a drink in decades,” (Lordy, one more self-righteous ex-alcoholic), she can’t imagine that any right-thinking person might actually need their meds to function. A familiar poet was just floridly crazy all over the open mic. I want to signal to the slam poet, to shout NO, NO, for CHRISSAKE DON’T tell the poor slob to live life at the edge, because he’s already jumped off multiple edges. If you tell him not to take his meds he just might swan-dive off the fourth floor for the fifth time. Lady, one of these days he’ll get it right, and you do not want his ugly, sticky, messy, high-speed death on your sober edgy head.
Jan Steckel is a disabled, bisexual poet and writer whose debut short fiction collection Ghosts and Oceans came out in 2023. Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award. Her poetry book Like Flesh Covers Bone won two Rainbow Awards. Her chapbooks Mixing Tracks and The Underwater Hospital also won awards. Her creative prose and poetry have appeared in Scholastic Magazine, Yale Medicine, Bellevue Literary Review, Canary, Assaracus and elsewhere. She has four Pushcart and four Best of the Net nominations. She lives in Oakland, California with her Sugar Daddy Boy Toy and two semi-feral cats.
