“Waking, Somtimes I Just Want” by Jason Nemec

A cup of coffee on these ceramic
mornings so that I might feel life warming
up to me- the same way a mechanic
feels it by laying palm on the humming
engine of a restored GTO, or

the sparkplug fingers of a becoming
girl mistaking a lit cigarette for
a pacifier as she slips nicotine
and not her tongue between my dry lips, or

Please dear god something other than a mean
hangover and a throat sore from singing
love songs to the back walls of nightclubs, cleaned
out by my own creations, needing more
pollution from the girl who had to leave.