Keep This Forever
Posted by Garrett Carey | Filed under Poetry, Print
[To Mr. Halliday]And yes, I was
that one time
the juvenile artist
at that cafe with all the necessary pretenses
and a waningly secret affair with
an older woman,
the poet with perfect skin
from Jersey
who hates people
who touch too much, but
buries her small light hand like an egg
in my cargo pocket
and slides her knuckle along my thigh.
Or maybe I gripped her unclenched fist
with just enough force,
the way I thought a man would,
and waited
for her finger
to trace the lines on my palm.
Anyway, aging white men talked
about youth
as if it was a Y/N note
that never returned
with its prognostications of love
or notlove,
and made clever references
to Rick James, and old women laughed
and we laughed
at this lonely disease of moribundity
to which we were,
of course,
immune. She was
grabbing my finger
with her whole small light hand
in what seemed (to juvenile me)
like long-awaited
infantine submission
and I was marvelling
at her perfect skin and
how this pretty cute poet
with all this unexhausted talent came
from Jersey
of all places.
I was wondering
what all this unspent life
had for her next,
this poet with perfect skin
who asked nothing more than to be
a passing fancy
at the edge
of someone’s sober wakefulness.
I was that,
one time. And then
I was something else.
