The Boys of Tinder
Boys who like me
Boys who don’t
Boys with face tattoos, boys who like magic tricks
Boys who like beer boys who use blushing emojis
unironically, boys with beards boys with mustaches boys who don’t like girls who
like dogs boys who only like girls with dogs boys who play the trumpet boys who think I’m
gorgeboys who want to know where I’m from boys who never get answers boys who think I’m
boys who want help singing Fergalicious boys who were called Tony Soprano in jail boys who
want adventure boys who think I work at The Met boys who want to talk about art while I am in
my PJs on the couch shoving potato chips into my face, rugby-playing boys Irish boys who like
my hair lonely banjo boys accordion boys boys I knew in high school boys I used to love boys
who want “crazy ladies” disney fan boys boys I sometimes see at starbucks who smile at me
and I smile back.
Please Hold
I wonder if the man answering the phone is tired
of me. That’s why he sighs when I ask, in my most
professional lilt, to be transferred. Two weeks in
and still no return call. Has he detected, by now,
the crevice in my voice?
There were a few years when I would sit in my front yard
with goggles and a small hammer, crack open rocks
with a child’s instinct for finding split points. One good whack
and the quartz came spewing out like precious venom. Everything
has its fault, its richness, and I want so badly
to be kind. You can hear it. Sizzling
like peroxide in a cut. You can hear it
in an office somewhere in the city, where the phone
is ringing and ringing and I have almost forgotten
the smell of hot earth and what it’s like
to get everything you want
with a single swing.
Hannah Corrie graduated from Barnard College with a BA in English and a concentration in creative writing. While there, she was the senior editor of A Barnard Writer’s Life. She is now a graduate student at New York University, and is the co-founder of The NYU Creative Writing Working Group.