Everyone but Him Dies in the Sequel
It’s not the joy; it’s the volume:
the crowded diner booth, half-full
plates and pissed-on snow banks
of used napkins, the microscopic
hang glide, soar on hot breath
between chews, words, choked-
on laughter, what pigeons prize
outside from above a park bench.
This call it in, and living, the ease
of sliding over plastic vinyl seating
winter through spring, and months
later still dropped trays of food
ordered by a family of five
when someone mentions
the president’s name,
coffee cups tap dance
in saucers, splash sewage,
some shuffle like Gene Kelly
dressed grunge, high on a bag
of heroin, that shit called Terminator
copped at 12th and 1st, the mid-nineties;
he’s really cookin’ and everyone is listing
headlines—the worst and most laughable—
until one person mentions the deaths of
Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher,
how he’s still haunted, an occasional
night sweat, as though recovering
from cardiac arrest, home alone
breathing deep, the Velcro-strap
cuff of a blood pressure monitor deflated
around the upper arm. He waits on results
the third time in half an hour, considers
phoning his mother at a nursing home
in a small town not far from Chicago.
No one admits those two got out
while the getting was good,
flicking a light switch
the same time
gas is smelled,
as 45 closes a car door;
you watched him leave
the room you stand in, where
fingers snap, the Death Star
exploding—hot finale
of Star Wars,
limbs flying.
***
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Photo by Gary Lund/Flickr