old things

we speak in different voices, these days

glass shards, cookie cutters—
cut me up or cut it out.
there are
wild things, here.
drinking, thinking, clinking glasses,
linking rhymes and artful clashes
of everything we know we’re not.
she says he says it’s not worth it;
he says she says go to hell
and leave your fucking car keys here this time;
i’ve got to go to work.

pistol eyes, they say she’s got, and guilty gasoline-tipped fingers,
she is dangerous combinations,
all crescendos and minor chords.
her hands shake, her lion roars
and it is only
a matter
of time
before there is no time, anymore.
she puts the knives back under the bed
and decides today is not the day
she’s got work in half an hour
and he won’t be home til late.

pistol eyes, they say, and loaded, too, by the looks of it.
the audience laughs, nervously.


well, it’s not as if he didn’t have it coming.