Has Appeared, is Forthcoming

When a to-do list Post-it

read Cancel Hair, Make

an Announcement. Who

boasted seatmate hand

jobs on international

flights? Red-eye, fake

sleep, face in Garbo tilt,

likely. Worshipped sexy

French. One guy never got

past getting gimlet-slurred

in his ex’s white childhood

house. If the lost witching-

hour cab had found him 

soaked in the cul-de-sac,

no return to the pillared

colonial then, no blame

for Alabama Thanksgiving.

Another mulled over ways

to narrate the invention  

of cinema so long he only

viewed a century of slapstick.

Screwball forgot his benzos

and allergy meds and black

mold attacked with visions

of angry angels dubbing

judgments in the mouths

of Buster and Fatty Roscoe.

Was it really six years since

my last dental appointment?

Still planned to hunker down

and conquer French. Who

shredded whose villanelle

to feed koi fish? Rhetoric

and Composition: our duty

to bitch about them. Erupted

my Irish Car Bomb on a PhD

who declared his focus Theory.

And who mocked stud earrings

on men to seem a stud, cocked

his image repeating Mother-

fucker, Smash and What, what?

Fancied himself the medium

for dead American slugger

scribes who lived on boats, train-

hopped and got misconstrued

as misogynists when Hey now,

wusses, these were true lovers

with knuckled hearts and war

wounds. Those improv bonfire

days aloof to meteorologists.

Symbolic stubble. Moody road

trips and Marco Polo nude

in faculty pools. Accidental

talents battled purposeful hacks

on bad apartment carpet, not

actual fighting but rough play

to force a fate of remembering

each other as broke lightweights.

Car-wash and litter-picking gigs

in supermarket lots hardened art,

made good fodder for biographies

on forthcoming back flaps. Sole

time a room wished spontaneous

combustion, one of us of obvious

upper-crust upbringing shrugged

off a coveted fellowship—smug,

curd-cheeked gall. The future New

Yorker twenty-under-forty Oprah

pick Barnes and Noble discovery

laureate swallowed our budget

wine saying I’ve always been 

lucky, and the real shit meant it.

Matthew Bruce writes: “My writing can be found in The Common, Sixth Finch, West Branch, The Cincinnati Review, At Length, The Carolina Quarterly, and Hotel Amerika, among others. Originally from Atlanta, I now live, more or less, in Minneapolis.”