After Hours

has me wiping rims for tips. I bob to the tap’s drip
that the speakers ignore, sustained only in the rattle
of an abandoned drum head on stage. A forgotten
phone buzzes to drunk texts among the booth cushions
and I want to call the band, tell them
to come back and play over me so I can mistake flesh
for reggae and nooses for swing as I rescue ones
from stomach acid and drink as if to remind myself
that my last poem sold for a local pizza
as people sit at my bar and dab grease out of their
slices with napkins. There’s no one to stop me at six.
There’s no one to expect that I exile my arousal to the
pocket of my jeans when the bouncer approaches.
There’s no one to say how’s the wife before they
remember it’s a husband and promise me it’s just an
expression where they’re from and then remember we’re
from the same place and then down another shot to forget
again and because they miss their wife. There’s no one
exiting the bathroom peeling cum from their hands and
telling me the donation overflowed with a laugh or that
the flakes are rebate as a man bursts out of the bar
stumbling toward the son he left on the other side of the
country dreaming of his father’s arrival each time he
throws a paper plane. This guy throws a
coaster in some bullshit solidarity. No one to ask me
if it feels like a suppository or if it bleeds and kick their
vomit off my shoe. There’s no one asking politely if I’ve
fucked the boss man. There’s no one letting me know
they hate the modern renovation, that they prefer
deflated cushions, sticky tables, cigarette smoke for
an afterthought, and pretending to be Irish.
They tell me to put on some pants.
No one tells me to stop my anthems for classics.
Instead, the light fixtures whine as no one tells me
to walk in a straight line before giving my keys back.
I wake up in a ditch to the sound of a siren either in my
head or nursing in the afterglow. My husband’s shoes
approach me at eye level and accidentally, out of habit,
mumble Who did this to you? before the police man
out of courtesy and protocol tells him to call my wife