Dear Bartender—

While you were gone, we encountered various strangers who appeared, then dropped off speeches along the closed visage, next to the skull where all the labor of abandoned days blindly sat. At first voices reflected on far sureties, but then things deteriorated, flopping and rusted. Some entered through doorways, others escaped through broken out windows, square-framed and sobbing. The dawn was infectious, but I’m sure you understand how that indelible mouth we call the Sun can only travel so far without making an absolute ass of itself.

a kind of warmth

that old woodstove where absence fit
where opportunities entered
in the end becoming sixteen searing refusals
various attempts at sky shone through
spilling cinders out onto the earthen floor
they looked like burnt out stars