Here's this week's poem.
A Divorced Dad Completes a Crossword Puzzle
6am in a tattered diner.
Orange, faded barstools
Sliced open decades ago by vandals, the plastic
Gnarled and pinching tight against the skin.
He’s on his fourth cup of coffee. Eyes down,
Ballpoint pen scanning the last remaining mystery.
14 across: “Dante’s Distraught Destination”
Nine letters.
The silence of the diner is broken by a quartet
Of two gaggling couples, barging into a booth.
Still fresh from drinking, loudly holding conversation.
He shuts his eyes. Presses his pen into the empty pocket
Of the first box. Breathes and sifts more sugar into
The cup. The couples
prate: Can you believe how many
Camera bags Chester has now?
I mean, honey? Isn’t that just
Too much? /Not if I keep buying cameras/Remember, remember,
Remember when we had that tequila phase we went through
where
We just couldn’t stop buying Peruvian hybrids/And now our
cupboard’s so bare, you
Won’t let me work/Because you want to get a silly job like
bartending. I told him, Louise,
I told him, if he gets a bar job, there’s no way we’d see
each other. Me teaching full time and all.
Just two sleeping shapes in the same house/But think of all
the free alcohol….
He watches, morbid with fascination.
Because he’s seen this horror film. He knows how time, the
predictable sculptor,
Will carve them, suffer them. Sober them.
And then, before his chin can quiver with the shared
agreement of loss,
The answer, it appears:
A DARK WOOD.
Onto the page. He
slaps a twenty on the counter, an extremely generous tip for
Time, glances once more at the two merry couples, and
He walks. He walks
with no direct destination, but with purpose.
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