Punk Show at the Triple Rock

All I can think when I see

the black hoodies and glasses,

blue hair and safety pins,

is where does everyone 

park their motorcycles?

as I stand 6-foot-6

awaiting the jagged bass

and power chords,

the voice of a man

whose nose has been

plugged with matching wine corks,

the girl in front of me

fixing to flail-dance so that her

costume jewel ring comes within

inches of snagging my eye

but never makes contact,

some untaught physics lesson

when I was in the classroom

and these punkers were in the cemetery,

passing a joint in a divine sepulcher,

experiencing John Ashbery first-hand.

And I take pride in the fact that I’m not self-conscious

in my pink-patterned shirt and khaki shorts.

That when a group of eight men, half old and bald,

half 15 and frail, start to mosh in a circle

and stumble against me, smelling

of High Life and sweat—the two not

all that dissimilar it turns out—I’m content enough

to softly push them away, standing my sticky ground

as girls in drab tank tops with short hair

take shelter behind my Midwestern mass,

as everyone unites in a shared goal of spirituality—

our desire for something loud and fast,

something far away from where it all started:

the cookie-cutter house in the 24-cookies-per-pan-

but-only-after-broccoli neighborhood

where it seemed like the laughing Jesus painting’s eyes

could see all four bedrooms and the walk-out basement, where

we often lay under the throw blanket,

a loose-stitched, crocheted mess with rug-tassel borders,

trying something, anything, as right now

the singer in the blue burglar mask from the next band

launches into the opening riff and the poem finishes its

overemotional acoustic set in the parking lot, knowing

that it can’t upstage the headliner but has to try.

Dylan Loring is a poet from Des Moines, Iowa. His poems have been published by New Ohio Review, North American Review, Ninth Letter, Split Lip Magazine, and Forklift, Ohio.