Alas, they are drinking there (in the bar)
and working the waitress, and frothing at the mouth. [1] Also, and, if priests and nuns were friends again, and boys and girls could shoot pennies with impunity, Logan Ave. would be much more safe and sane, as it may once have been. [2] If, graffiti spray sounds and watch-dog barks and the old lady afraid to go out [3] getting up from her plastic-covered couch and mistrustful of anyone not white, if she could walk about again she might be thought of to be happy, [4] she might ask her neighbor for a word or some insights. You want insights? Let’s talk here openly. I’ll tell you one. I never got over that. [5] Just like him. He never got over this. [6] My life went on like this for some time and I kept notes in a fake bible. [7] Another thing, I was the irritating roommate. The other ones, my roommates, [8] must have gotten over it by now, but we can’t say for sure. The corner bar had a name, they all do, they are like a body, every body is somebody’s baby, every street number could be a beginning for somebody. [9]
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[1] “There are bodies and there is the void, in which these bodies are and through which they move.” —Lucretius
[2] “… give me that place where I’m erased…” —Jorie Graham, Orpheus and Eurydice
[3] These instances are flexible—the watch-dog spray sounds, old lady barks, graffiti afraid to go out, etc.
[4] “Ask: can the motion of clouds be known / by the motion of their shadows?” —Karen Carcia, Fragment: DaVinci Notebooks
[5] Unspecified, apart from the arrival of carrion birds.
[6] Again, unspecified, but the carrion birds have begun feeding.
[7] “There is much conceptual confusion between the horsemen of the Apocalypse and the Last Prophet; further evidence that the Holy books were written in collaborative fashion.” —Josef Assad, The Banjo Players Must Die
[8] Husband, cat, house plant, cable tv, God.
[9] Alas, they are all drinking in there.
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Arlene Ang is the author of The Desecration of Doves (2005), Secret Love Poems (Rubicon Press, 2007), a collaborative book with Valerie Fox, Bundles of Letters Including A, V and Epsilon (Texture Press, 2008), and Seeing Birds in Church is a Kind of Adieu (Cinnamon Press, 2010). She lives in Spinea, Italy where she serves as staff editor for The Pedestal Magazine and Press 1.
Valerie Fox’s previous books of poems include The Rorschach Factory (Straw Gate Books, 2006) and Bundles of Letters Including A, V and Epsilon (a compilation with Arlene Ang, She is an editor for Press 1. She teaches at Drexel University, in Philadelphia, and lives with her family in New Jersey.