you answer when you are ready
to leave we want to rush to the next

drunk-stop the next essential crying
opposite ends of Silky’s shuffleboard

table all the sugar scattered on wood
by the windows of natural sunlight

we slide the puck across attempts
to not cross the line too late

we have said what we have said
I am on my phone sobbing

to an automated voice the bank
the prophet’s lugubrious martini

raised inevitably to our lips

(originally published in Subterranean Blue Poetry, Fall 2020)