Second Day Poetry Festival: Word Sugar Crash by David P. Miller

Oddball Magazine

13 years ago

I stand at the intersection and listen

to the obsessed buzz of the pale walk-light man,

a man never known to actually walk,

as I scan the streets for my wife.

She comes across my eyesight’s horizon

carting the wheeled bag as she hustles to make

her train to Boston. Honey, I tell her, I’m

taking another night here by myself

if I can get a room. Her eyes widen

and film a little but she knows what I mean.

I hurry to the hotel and secure one of two rooms left.

After the evening reading, where labia and clitoris words

resound the Universalist sanctuary, I find my new room,

stream Mahler’s Fifth through tiny notebook speakers,

and revise two poems I’ve carried for thirty-six hours.

But the bed is vast, much larger than last night’s.

It swallows this alone poet’s post-midnight collapse.