jonberger

BABY JUST SENT ME A

Your vacation pictures
placed so daintily
in your electronic album
available online
are beautiful.

I know you were nervous to fly
but
it seems
getting away did you some good.
You look so happy
so far away.

You are leaning left in many of the shots
unbalanced in your Hunter green boots
as you smile to your right
wistfully.

It’s not the photographer
you’re looking at
or the people in frame with you
but you will regularly stare out there.

Your pale eyes are piercing something
someone who I can’t see.
Who is it?
You do not look at me like that.
I don’t think you ever have.

You look so good in the pictures.
Welcome home
I’m glad you enjoyed your trip.

HANGING ON THE TELEPHONE

If I still had your phone number
I wouldn’t call.
I would not use it
to reach out
unless it were an emergency
like a Thursday
or any other day that rhymed with it.

I wouldn’t reach out to you
not after all this time
not with how the last words.
I would stay out of your hair
off of your line
far from your personal space.
I’ve been doing a good job of it lately,
haven’t I?

Just give me your phone number
please
and I’ll continue
to leave you alone.

SPORE

"I don’t want to be pretty no more,"
she said, to no one in particular
muttering in the darkened day,
hoping someone might listen.
She was still pretty enough
to engage attention
on some topics
so we spoke of the change of weather
in the Fall.

"I was just listening to the floor."
she said, on the ground
ale stains speckled her tight top
from where she’d tried to dance
too late in the evening
with too full a glass.
I helped her up,
helped her out the door
and into a cab
and away from what memories she could retain
of yet another escapade.

"Don’t think of me as your whore,"
she said, in the morning after
the night before
and I agreed
as, in the harsh new light,
I wasn’t sure
I wanted to think of her at all.

But I did.
She remained with me
in some form
after she left for a train
with ale stained lips
with which she said,
"our time together
will end as lore."

WILD GIRL

The wild girl from high school
that crazy kid
who was always up for anything
and anyone
and couldn’t care less what you thought
who fought like a tiger
and fucked like a freight train
and fell like a comet
in regular galactic rotation,
she can be found
fatter
off of Forty third,
selling real estate
when not hauling her kids to karate.

Traci got normal.
Traci grew up,
though you didn’t see it,
couldn’t imagine it,
the girl that made school
so educational,
is gone,
replaced by a matronly mom.

She doesn’t talk about the old days
doesn’t talk to the old crew
unless they’ve proven
they can supply the twenty percent down.
It’s not that she doesn’t trust;
she just doesn’t know,
you know?

Traci, that wild girl,
disappeared into apocrypha
even as you desperately
seek her still.

PLACEHOLDER

You may not love me
or even want me
but
I may serve
until the right thing comes along.

I could be your consolation prize
your temp gig.
I could be what gets you through the night
when you have nothing else.

And,
if you were to like it,
if you grew to care,
if I grew on you
in some way
at some time,
well, that would be all right.