He

has this ramshackle trailer
out by the highway,
fluorescent lights screwed to
the side of it, shape of a cross,
cords running back inside
through a cracked window,
but in the cold they never
work. In the winter, there’s
nothing to do but drink. Sit
by the back door with a
shotgun and a beer.

waltz

in this other world of
dogs on fire, in this city of
abandoned buildings.

Said dance, and I did,
and the song was one from
her wedding.

Said you remind me of someone.

Said I will love you forever,
and so I proved her wrong.

Laughed at the idea of
Jesus Christ.

Fucked a woman who
said she believed in hope.

Smiled when she cried out
someone else’s name.

notes on the tyranny of failure

It was a stupid goddamn story, I was in the
grocery store, one thirty in the morning and
buying a can of frosting, and she was young,
eighteen, seventeen, and said she needed
a ride home.

She was like bombs falling on distant villages,
and she wasn’t you, and you were gone while
I fingerfucked her in the car in front of
the apartment, and then she said we’d have
to be quiet.

Said the woods were on fire, said the river was
filled with disease, that this was her parents’
place, that she slept on the couch and the baby
in the spare room, and I was gone before sunrise.

Gave her a name that wasn’t mine, offered it
like a gift and she took it, and I was starving,
was approaching invisible, and when I told the
story to a guy I worked with, he just laughed.

Said he didn’t need a doctor, then ended up
losing the leg.

Told me I was an asshole, which was probably
true.

Found out a couple of years later that he’d
died, but couldn’t remember his face.