Two Poems » Bridge Eight Press

Hotspot

for Markus Jones

It’s me.
It’s where I’m at. Like
right now. It’s like you’re
half a continent away from me
walking down Boston’s Newbury Street with three days
of fashionable stubble on your chin
considering an early afternoon cocktail at McGreevy’s
and even though Marcella who has a diamond-shaped
tattoo on her wrist and speaks with an Italian accent
cuts your hair every five weeks at Viselli’s Salon
and even though your Versace Eros cologne
surrounds you with a vanilla-mint aroma
you know as you ask the bartender for a glass
of top shelf bourbon
that your neatly pressed dress slacks just aren’t enough.

Here I am
in northwest Nebraska pouring myself
a late morning bowl of cereal and maybe
there’s not enough milk to soak even a quarter
of the corn flakes and maybe the icy wind
won’t stop rattling the windows
yet there hovers about me
an invisible cloud of something-ness that grooves
like heatwaves—like several hours
of serious shaking at a downtown
night club. It’s as if each particle
in the solar system has been funneled to my kitchen
to twirl like a kinetic conga line around my kitchen table
and out my front door.

Suddenly you’re thinking
Oh, northwest Nebraska! Suddenly
you tell the bartender Brother,
I need to get frontier and remote. Who can deny
the electrifying pulse of my town’s
solitary stoplight? Who dares assert
EJ’s BBQ doesn’t have the most secret
secret sauce?

It’s like you know—
you can’t deny—the essential importance of each cow and bull
grazing the unpopulated prairieland
around my house. Though I’m still dressed in my plaid bathrobe
you understand I have traveled lightyears
beyond fashion. How can you not feel a flutter
of envy at these miles of unpaved roads or yearn
to experience Anderson Clothing’s $8 sales rack? How can you
in your silk shirt and lavender tie
not desire this meteoric surge
of rural significance as I listen to the heater blow and clock tick
and you sip your bourbon
and order a pork belly taco appetizer
and listen to the buzz of conversation
as the both of us wait—we’re always waiting—for whatever it is
that’s going to happen.

My Victorian England

Here it is not just another Wednesday
of us discussing which bills we cannot afford to pay
as we prepare a stir fry dinner. Instead we drink late-afternoon tea
on a velvet rose-petal-pink settee
while Aunt Veronica dispenses high society gossip
regarding her great-niece Philomena’s recent scandal
of inappropriate hand touching
with the divorced marquis from Marseille. In my Victorian England
how can it not be possible to hitch a ride
in a high perch phaeton
to visit the bustling shops of London
where there must be cobblestone roads and a parade
of parasols filling the streets? Even here
it would be preferable if I could purchase
fine silver cutlery, if there were enough shillings
in my torn leather purse to buy you an ivory laced traveling hat
as we breathe together the early industrial air
which probably features a host of harmful, unregulated carcinogens
but because this is my Victorian England
there are several highly enforced labor laws
restricting children from working extensive hours in the cotton mills
and the cholera epidemic–there must have been
a cholera epidemic–produces nothing more
than a couple minutes of uncomfortable stomach cramps
and instead of piles of filth and trash in the London slums
love poems bloom on the doorstep
of each working-class residence
where as we relax in a much respected public house in Whitechapel
I do not feel disheartened by our dark tunnel
of debt or the monotony of a 6:00 AM alarm clock
because in my Victorian England it’s impossible to deny the small treasures
at the bakery, the pudgy baker in his white baking hat
carrying a tray of chocolate mousse tartlets
which maybe really were invented during the Victorian era
and which maybe we can afford
and why not include a slice of pink Valentine geranium cake
for me to enjoy as I wander alone
past the estates of the luxuriously rich
with their acres of manicured grass and well maintained gardens
and their hallways of European paintings and discreet butlers
and their libraries filled with not-yet-classic Victorian novels
as I drift further from our Wednesday dinner–
your voice trying to call me back–
wanting once again to disappear
through the heavy oak door of a stunningly ornate, five-story mansion.

STEVE COUGHLIN’S poems and essays have appeared in several literary journals and magazines, including the Gettysburg Review, New Ohio Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast, Willow Springs, and Slate. His book of poetry, Another City, was published by FutureCycle Press. He teaches creative writing and American literature at Chadron State College in northwestern Nebraska.