frondose wondrous

go take a pee I'll hold your backpack
and the film was so awful
dreadful as the cheap popcorn
humid already not even halfway through the movie
it's so difficult to go past I liked it/I didn't like it
preemptive suicide seems so befitting these days (to me, anyway)

* * *

days like this make me think about you
the cross-eyed plump girl whose profile so much
resembles your profile, the same nose
(of course you were not cross-eyed)
i am desperate but i lend myself to memory
your blank stare was fixed somewhere
on the other side of the bus window
and you were sitting silent, hermetic
I came to love that look of yours
especially in days like this
when I see your face in other girls
and you can't see outside of the bus window
because it's raining and foggy

* * *

I moved on, I feel happy, I write about Stanley Kubrick
I make plans, I feel empowered, I make my first attempt at a script
I spot a white hair, another one here and one more there
I love my new girlfriend and still can mouth the bitterness
of a recent failed relationship
keen on failure, a hipster abashed,
a walk-out; yet this was not the tone

* * *

the tone was a soggy window pane
the plump girl in cowboy boots
eyes crossed and her same, exact profile
the late arriving
striving for words
a hook of a title
light breakfast
shower with a shower cap
just like mom did when in a rush
three holes in my stomach
dizzy, fussing over the lack of money
about how it's become so difficult to have a decent conversation
to go past yeah, that's so cool
but not uttering a word about the lousy weather
getting wet under the rain
easy on, easy out
missing my bed, her same exact profile
the eyes-crossed, but she wasn't,
arriving late and still guessing
why didn't I try to get back what I wanted the most


phil mcrae (Lafayette, IN, 1978)