13. My People

Watching the sun set out the window,

sipping spiced cocoa, examining

the details of the mural

of some place in Spain where the light

is always beautiful, and the smiles

never fade, and the faces do not age,

I am among my people.

We are the shitty-poetry makers,

the intense-face-at-your-laptop makers,

the drama readers

and the dreamers of dreams;

and I would like to thank you,

my fellow solitary intellectuals,

for sharing the jazz, the too-beautiful

Spanish girl, and the awareness

of our shared estrangedness

with me.

And later, when I grow afraid,

I will know that futures are more like

coffee shops than concert halls,

and I will think fondly of your too-focused faces

and of spiced cocoa,

and of the Spanish girl who never stops laughing.

and even of shitty Christmas jazz. 













I am considering whether the last stanza does any work. I don't know that it does. "Coffee shops, not concert halls" is one of my mantras, but that doesn't necessarily mean it needs a place in this particular poem. If it does, I'll change the things that are at the end to involve a sense of time. I was thinking things that resemble future-me, but I don't actually know how to do that without just being like, "there's a woman with children, and an old one, who makes pie for the neighborhood kids on sundays-- it's kind of what she has instead of God." 

This, btdubs, is actually what my favorite coffee shop is like. This is the one where they gave me free coffee and won exclusive rights to my soul forever.