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)