Actually, Wait

Substack Poem #05

Actually, Wait

You don’t have to fix me, just tell me
whether there’s a name for it.  I’m gonna pop
whatever’s poppable.  In the ’90s everyone always
sat by a window hugging their own knees
& it was always October-slash-November.

People say “that’s life” about those moments but
it’s thinking you’re going to have them & then not.
People will really just go ahead and order pizza without
overthinking it & punching themselves in the head.
People ask one another how they are when they know

I can hear them, just to mess with me.
I came all the way from China for roses.
I was a pleasanter surprise than an ingrown hair.
He put his wallet back into his pants,
then smiled & said “I’ve got an American.”

He was right.  There one was.  She looked too old
for parachute jeans, rainbow socks & a hoodie,
like 38 maybe.  Undereyeshadow.  She said her name
was Brenda Lavinia Coffee & that she was too ironic
to be considered a folk singer.  Her profile,

with stubby maroon pigtails, appears they say,
sporadically in pizzas ordered in the Winter.
She collects chokers.  She has heat in the ass.
Her shield has two layers of bronze & four of oxhide,
or some junk.  I think she did drama growing up.

Women in offices talk baby talk to one another
& this annoys Brenda Lavinia Coffee to no end.
She calls them dried-up cunts & twists her tongue.
She’s the only thing in life that isn’t attached;
the only thing in life that isn’t exact

-ly like high school is college, so people miss it.
BLC went to that one upstate that people call
a name that’s a potsmoking pun, which is all of them.
She learned that ordering a pizza in the Winter
is like ordering a pizza in the ’90s,

especially on Sunday night.  I told her
that when a Poet stops & corrects themself
in a poem it’s called a Sapphic Hiccup.
She said that was totally the name of her new band,
kissed me on the cheek, then hit me in the stomach.

I said I put myself out there more than anybody.
She was nonplussed.  Actually, wait—She wasn’t, but
the thing about what people incorrectly use
nonplussed to mean is that there isn’t another word
for it & should be.

I will never paywall, but you can Buy Me a Coffee, if you want.