BEFORE IT'S A MEMORY IT'S A PHOTOGRAPH
Less
of dailiness & more how lovely any place
with thee, Ada dubs us the Band back together,
laughter in fact pulled as though one of us wasn't all
Ah-hem, guys, I'm standing right here. In Raleigh,
heaps of houses remind me of Emily Dickinson,
splintered parlor mirrors called in a culmination
back. You needn't patience nor meet the lens
having been there, kneeling on the carpet or leaning
enough to know bad choices then make them
nonetheless. Wild nights, possibly, & in the AM
thus a phone's ill-starred news, clothes packed
& scatter. Dickinson lived there & there, over there
I forgot not to elbow glass, within shards innumerable
another you who chases the paddle & upstream
sleeps on islands, a nearly anodyne affair accruing
seven, eight & nine beers gone. I'm doodled,
as if a bird on whom I could've hinted something
hasn't collywobbled & vanished in dirt. I feel rotten
thinking my stamina 2003 & not on clearance,
learning yet to steal a poem, how best to feed it
& keep the whole thing alive, not smoking albeit
curbs show otherwise. We could've used a broom
steady, steady now in the Polaroid, on t-shirts
or bantered like Redford out of focus & sinking boats,
everything's crowning oh, I'm sorry, you too
should've been there & not the far end of the table
smiling maybe never. Honestly, I'd a pen in my pocket
& now peddle pencils to the flattered, rented page,
renderings in which you wouldn't erase anything
from Casey, Patrick footing the feast not even
Eric saw it coming but agrees: We should chart
our own bar, the jukebox grumbling the one band
we love to hate. We know, like white on white,
every word committing what we promised to forget
or is it that other way, egregiously a face or two
& next to nothing, no one, nowhere dappled
outside last call. I poured midsentence then rife,
above our bourboned heads the futile, unrepentant
curve of moon. Tonight your town's so… I'm
you & you are… Mind unmoored, hearts rowing
or we'd spin forever the compass & together
wake the early light, over heels down the stairs
yawning like lions tawny, benign, terrifyingly still.
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