Occasion
Gatsby is not drinking a gin rickey.
Dracula not puncturing a vein.
Jack the Ripper does not knife a teenage girl
deep into her abdomen and then snake her intestines
through the town square. The birds remain in the pines.
Hunter S. Thompson isn’t dropping acid in Vegas
and grabbing a woman who came to clean his room
with fresh sponges and bleach.
The room does not hold a frat boy
opening my legs. It does not cool
the man who gave me wine and refused
to let me eat and followed me to my car.
It does not have my bed after, only me
in it. I had pulled the door out of his hands,
locked the car, driven away.
The poem does not include the teenage boy
who unfurled his tongue between his pointer and middle finger,
following me on a bike while I pushed her stroller.
This isn’t about the man who played with himself
between the book stacks while I shelved
Probability and Image before closing.
The crickets are not in this poem. Not the summer night,
Pine-Sol mopped over ice-cream-stand floors.
I washed those tiles. This poem does not contain
the spiked punch the fists on the door the
men who circled at the bar and sang,
Just fuck him already. Do us all
a favor. Every year, I write this poem.
I saw them later, passed out drunk
on the carpet when I was pulled into a room.
This poem does not have a mouse.
Not cardinals, not chickadees, not finches.
Every year, I observe pillows and sheets
move into dorms. Yesterday, a boy tried
to take a stick from my daughter’s hand. I wouldn’t let him.
2021-01-11 22:55:00
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