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Way to find this page! Welcome, congrats!
I'm assuming you found it the intended way - scanning the barcode on the replica Taco Bell receipt I designed for the chapbook 'The (Unofficial) Taco Bell Poet Laureate' - but if you did some sort of website snooping and found the unlisted page in another way, kudos to you too.
Your reward is extra Taco Bell poems by yours truly, Casey Garfield, The (Unofficial) Poet Laureate of the Taco Bell. Please find below various poems written over the course of the four years I worked on 'T(U)TBPL' which didn't make it into the final version of the manuscript for various reasons - mostly because it ended up being a really slim volume focused on a personal journey/narrative, and anything that didn't serve that focus ended up feeling out of place.
the machine grinds and spits
no receipt, no rewards
I am fed all the same
the speakers remind me
the club can’t even handle me right now
the buckled booth can
the cups in the ads
aren’t the cups you get
they’ve run out of branded bags
practice not minding
knowing better than the perfect
is the real
The girlies are singing along to Drake at the Taco Bell
The girlies at the Taco Bell can’t believe that girl went out like that
The girlies bet she’s going to be at the club they’re heading to after the Taco Bell
The girlies at the Taco Bell have a group chat called the girlies
The girlies are planning what festival to go to this summer at the Taco Bell
The girlies at the Taco Bell are thinking of starting a new group chat
The girlies don’t trust that girl who’s not at the Taco Bell
The girlies at the Taco Bell think that guy has always been fine to them
The girlies are just wondering about that girl who’s not at the Taco Bell
If she says that kind of stuff to them, what does she say about the girlies
When they’re not around to hear, when they don’t invite her to the Taco Bell
I am going to die outside a fast food chain
and will do everything in my power
to make it glorious, which is to say
nothing. I am going to die on a
newly pedestrianised road with a
vegan bean burrito in my hand
and the comments section on the
local news articles about me will be
enough to kill me all over again.
I am going to walk somewhere I
am not welcome and unwillingly start
a debate with each step, and when it
is decided that I have lost the argument
I never asked to be part of, I will
of course turn to ash on the high
street and pray it's not reported on.