No Xmas Tree Just an empty bottle of very good whiskey, 2 women, and a drink during the course of a week that ended with us not speaking to each other since. I put a rose like those I steal from the neighbors garden in said bottle as I reminder there is much beauty In this world. Even with the women gone. The knife one of them threw at me for looking at her friend’s legs remains on the floor where it landed after hitting the wall and missing me by a foot. A reminder that any New Year’s Eve even for a man with little to lose can be more curious than planned. I/he does not mind the things they stole or borrowed with ill intent. Who alone with all that once was still reaches for what lingered sweet long enough to be savored. His wedding ring lost in a desk alongside knowledge she pawned hers. He places a comically large Seashell to ear just to hear the sea scream for the past like him on most days. She's OK Almost She says but her glazed eyes lost pinpoints of confusion tell me different and her skin sallow with track marks I can't tell if old or new just that they tell a story I already know the ending to. We talk of poetry we performed once, together apart to smatterings of applause long ago. Of those we thought we knew under lights spilling their souls with captivating corrupted vehemence. But she hasn't read in years. Tells me I look like I'm doing well. She's offended when i ask if she needs money... yet takes what I give waving as she walks away into the darkness on an unusually otherwise bright sunny day. Ex On the Street Not being invisible or able to hide when she spots me first with X-ray eyes. The air, getting thinner when she hugs me, as if we’re still together, as if that fatal night hadn’t happened. Then she says that I look good, that I’ve lost weight, but I don’t and haven’t, staring at her smiling face. Love demands forgiveness but losing your lover & your best friend in one cruel night I never counted on. I say goodbye 5 times. It’s like she doesn’t hear my last image of her, him in her mouth, in our bedroom, clear. One of us was in love and the other escaped as I do now with alacrity all shaken and wounded by a past now present.
Rp Verlaine, a retired English teacher living in NYC, has an MFA in creative writing from City College. He has several collections of poetry including Femme Fatales Movie Starlets & Rockers (2018) and Lies From The Autobiography 1-3 (2018-2020). Rp’s work has been featured in Punk Noir, Ygdrasil, and Runcible Spoon.