the couch
we were living on the second floor
of a converted home on claremont avenue in buffalo
in a college neighborhood
that didn’t shut up from september to may
the kids played beer pong on the lawn
and would one day be our elected leaders
but we couldn’t get the couch up the steps
the delivery men shrugged and left it there
it was my problem, they said
handing me the receipt
everything was my problem in buffalo
the car that didn’t work
the shitty job in the wine store
where i got yelled at every day by some
lilliputian assistant manager
with failed rock and roll dreams
the graduate classes that i needed
so i could put a tourniquet
on the decade working bad jobs for small men
all my problems
i was fed up, tired, throwing up a lot
and bleeding out of the ass when i shit
i called my wife at work and cried and told her
that i couldn’t take it anymore
i said, the couch is stuck there on the steps
and i plan on leaving it there forever
we had to pay someone to get it
through a door that we had on a balcony
i quit the wine store job on the day we got it in
when we drank our wine that night
i felt renewed and invigorated
i spilled some red on the cushion
it could’ve been another problem but it wasn’t
and eventually i got another job to hate
and i graduated but the tourniquet didn’t take
and we moved that couch back to brooklyn
where we beat the thing to hell for another seven years
wine and lust and love and hate
until we threw it out last night
and brought in the new couch to replace it
all brand spanking new and just waiting for the years
to defile us and it
over and over again
like we were the gentle whores of time.
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