The Beautifully Worthless Quotes

“Who isn't interesting enough to help --
what forgotten woman sits in a lawn chair in her yard
with a can of soda pressed to her thigh, and the radio
blaring the death toll of Texans,
who were victims of a record heat wave?
Whose inner voice sits quiet like an obedient dog
and never says, go go go.

I want to go places I've never been
Because I haven't failed there yet.

So you can understand a little better,
How a disgruntled waitress might pack her dog
And a few belongings and head for a town
She dreamed of, searching for something to break
The spell of monotonous, morbid night speak.”
― Ali Liebegott, The Beautifully Worthless

“do you or don't you know
the two worlds I'm talking about,
the world that doesn't exist
where you wish you could be
on the dirt road that stretches out of Idaho
away from the cave and family?
The girl you want lives there.

All my life I've wanted to be the grand gesture
that forces the mouth open in disbelief

Instead I was the lamp cord, collecting dust and never moving.
It's easy to be the destroyed one.”
― Ali Liebegott, The Beautifully Worthless

“The daughter wants to turn the past on its back like a turtle or a roach, leaving those legs walking futilely through air cheering on those starved and paralyzed years. The mother put her makeup on, got ready for work, while cigarettes burned down, one by one in the chipped, red ashtray. The daughter stood beside the blaring alarm clock and shook the mother's sleeping body who worked sixteen hours a day and called the daughter and son from pay phones between jobs. When the mother found the daughter on the lawn of the mental hospital playing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star on her harmonica the mother couldn't believe it, because she was gone the years that led to it. When they finally came together, they came together as guilty mother and guilty daughter and found there was nothing there to trade.”
― Ali Liebegott, The Beautifully Worthless