“Where Do You Think These Thoughts Stem From?”
Trying to explain
to the fat quack
slurping at a styrofoam coffee cup,
after all the bullfights, all the women, the Nobel,
Paris, Michigan and all those green hills in Africa,
Hemingway still ended it all
in an early hours kitchen
with that shotgun.
The fat quack,
he too,
one day will rot in the ground
and the pretty receptionist who cleared her throat, avoiding my eye contact,
the old man selling newspapers from a cardboard box and the girl selling woodblock prints from a market stall, the bus driver with his wooly sweaters, too.
Everyone who walked away with hands bloodied,
every woman I called mine with candle in hand,
mother, father, sibling, friend,
broken bones in decomposed materials.
A time when your name
is uttered carelessly into a dwindling, twilight space
for the final,
last time.
The fat quack nods, his leather chair squeaks,
writing me a subscription,
I will throw in a trash can on the way to a bar.
