for jason

despite what i may have said before,
i secretly like it: the men twice my age
in the state store trying to hide their smirks
as we stroll up to the counter, enough angst
for a crowd and one marked-down fifth
between us. moments clinking
beers in a dark bar when my eyes snag
on some guy whose stare reads,
“nice catch, dude!” a message clearly meant
for you on a frequency only i pick up,

your tuner pruned down to essentials:
small bills and sweat and dining in towns
so old they’ve forgotten their own names,
where the wolves of the new world lurk
and you pretend to ignore their sharpening
teeth. that’s the intrigue. their reality
a stage where they watch only styrofoam
cutouts of what we are: freaks
endowed with a special kind of arrogance
the burden of truth a grin we flash each other,

a joke no one is in on. that one
where we rip down the curtains
and something new happens, more holy
than touch. the dead language
for things the new one doesn’t say:

i love you
and the trash you’re made of

i see all of the too-much too

you’re clearest to me on a road
that goes forever, mumbling poems
as you burn the endless tank, joints
in the glove box and astral weeks
in a thousand jewel cases
crashing together under the seats

 

 

---

 

Kat Giordano is a poet and massive crybaby in Pittsburgh, PA. Her poems have appeared in Indigent Press, Rat’s Ass Review, The Cincinnati Review, Up The Staircase Quarterly, and others. They have also been known to show up trembling on people’s doorsteps in the middle of the night, too traumatized to explain what they’ve seen. She is a co-editor of Philosophical Idiot and can usually be found overindulging in her shoddy mental health at katgiordano.com or on Twitter at @giordkat.