panache, perhaps

Pizza Time

 

Sometimes I feel like I’m whispering

into a megaphone that’s turned off

says Sean, reading from a blue notebook

he made in art class last semester. He sits

 

down. I’m already sitting and I know

what he means though I ask the wrong question,

the one about the girlfriend. No, he isn’t sad

and missing her. He’s sad walking around.

 

I’m sad walking around, too. We sit and no one

walks past in the hallways because everyone

leaves our school as fast as they can. ]

Whole days go by and I see no one

 

that loves me, I say. He says, It wasn’t the same

at my other school. I say, Me neither. He’s

already closed that notebook he made.

But it’s not that there aren’t good people here,

 

I think, or say, we’re talking and not everything

from the brain exits the mouth. We have to go

to a poetry reading but we’re going together.

We get up. We pass by the side of the library

 

that’s covered in glass, the glass covered in blinds.

Is it us, or this place? one of us says and I say

This place, and mention New York and Kathryn

in the back of my car, nodding at how her city

 

gives back, makes wintertime worth it, all those

exhibits uptown and trombones in the park

and you can take the subway anywhere. Here

we get the sun, every day. And that’s nice, we say.

 

But that’s not anyone’s doing! We’re laughing

but it isn’t funny. And sleeping alone in a bed is lonely,

Sean says, I could wake up dead and nobody

would know it. I know what he means. I think

 

it has to do with bearing witness. About visiting

Klee hung on a wall. About loving a person

by cooking them tofu. Or something to do with

inertia. Or people with grit. Or an older

 

America. The reading takes place where

readings take place and waiting, we talk about

Jericho, being so smart, writing those poems, knowing

those songs. The poet in front says “fadder”

 

for father and it sounds more correct. Everything’s

over in about  forty minutes. I say the word pizza

because it’s Sean’s favorite word. Two slices with pesto

and two with ricotta. The game is on loud

 

in the kitchen; the kitchen is next to the booths.

Before dropping me off, Sean gives me a sticker

from a band he was in. It’s likely that I’ll save it

for seven years, then paste it to a letter  to him.

 

Dear Sean, I’ll write. The Holsteins here

are sick of their milk. The fruits on the trees

wage war by wielding juice. All the poems we wrote

in school are finally getting acted out.