Little Shipwrecks

Little shipwrecks hunched at the bar, diamond in the nostril of night

The check casher’s eyes blink like digital clocks + camphor

I was forgetting to “feel better”

I was ready to tell you everything, like so much cold chowder in weeping parlors

Left my glove in the ashtray of your narrow pelvis, a ruse to earn your confidence

ESL will have to do at this hour + the candied instrumental

of a military dirge strung from the soft underbelly of a fungus

Let me put it this way, tenderly

a rotten yolk passed between two mouths