Adam Spiegelman

Honda CR-V

What returns to me in dreams: a hopeless closing 

Shift, locking up, spit shining this or that

Splitting the tips unfairly, probably ripping 

Off the quiet girl. Stepping out of DeSilva’s into 

Winter air, harbor, window open for a cigarette,

Seat heater on maximum. To go home now

Versus later. Love Story or Sakura Grape 

At the gas station. I hope we’re snowed in 

Together. Me and whichever guy is awake.

They’ll look like missionaries and have hearts

Like dogs. We’ll meet in a parking garage

Or pull over by a trailhead. We’ll be foul-breathed, 

Dutiful. Under the friction of our privacies

Our wet, pubescent hearts, they’ll splinter and spark.

Harry

I lived with Harry on the top floor of a dumbass house 

That looked just like the house on the American Football album cover

You know the one and with a couple pizza boxes on the walkway

That’d been rained and trampled on so long they were basically decopauged

To the pavement. He took hour long showers without using 

A lick of soap, and disappeared for days at a time with women on binges 

Of pathological infatuation, grand tours of Rockland and the end always the same:

Gifts and clothes and locks of hair tossed off the Bear Mountain Bridge. 

Swearing to join the Franciscan Brotherhood at Graymoor. Swearing to join the army.

We killed one drab winter together, and so slowly. Most nights, he drank alone 

In his old Toyota, idling in the snowy driveway, listening to Pavement, while I

Shot dope alone in my bedroom, listening to Duster. He’d stumble in at 2am,

Breaking plates and raving against women, against dating, against marriage, against porn.

We always maintained our sobriety, officially. The army was my thing. We were innocent.