Like Poe
You’ve learned old girlfriends don’t stay dead and buried.
Everything’s inside your head: the eddies,
maelstroms, male-storms in the tarn of angst.
Been here before: dead-drunk in Baltimore,
a Ravens fan, a border state between
deep dreamless sleep and every morning’s wake.
You can’t imagine ever sitting down
to breakfast, not with what’s walled-up, bricked-in,
floored-over, and entombed. It’s not the body—
hair, feet, tits, ass, dick, and lips—it’s more
the feeling: cool black rain that breaks your fever,
motherlove, and tomb-as-womb reflexively.
You force a respite from your martyrdom,
you free some headspace to create. Till they return.
Leave Home
old Ramones record
beer smell still in the sleeve
Thomas Zimmerman teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits The Big Windows Review https://thebigwindowsreview.com/ at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Poems of his have appeared recently in Ephemeral Elegies, Grand Little Things, and Trestle Ties. Tom’s website: https://thomaszimmerman.wordpress.com/
