I don’t like to think
about anything this close,
focus poems on something
further away, preferably the past.
How do you not notice
the amount of whiskey and wine
taking tonight. Spilled water
soaking the table, hands shaking
too much to wipe away.
Your emptied glasses out number
glances. I wonder when I was
there, not just keeping up,
but outpacing your orders
if I was the same.
Conversation rambling so many
places, yet somehow going
nowhere. You’re losing
words before the sentence
has a chance to begin.
You try to convince the room
a singer is a poet but only when
started at a certain album. Listened
through modern heartbreak,
the type we put each other through.
No one’s convinced or knows
what we were for six months,
an uneven love. What we tried
to put back together in September,
only to fail like we did in May.
For the first time I think,
no matter how long we drew
out leaving, it’s best we went
separate ways.
Daniel is a world-traveling poet originally from Anchorage, Alaska. Currently, he is based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan as part of the writing MFA program at the University of Saskatchewan. His poems often focus on relationship to the long list of places he’s lived. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Beyond Words, Blood and Bourbon, Cerasus Magazine, Down in the Dirt, and many others.
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