poem of the day 10.29.15

the grand inquisitor

marilyn

likes to ask a lot of questions

she soaking the essence out of me

on our first date

but maybe i don’t mind

since it’s taken us two months to get here

do you like michael chabon? she asks

what about matthew sweet?

what’s it like to be done with college?

she walks me around oakland and schenley park

weaving the streets

then all of these wooded paths

twenty-two years in this city

and i don’t even know where in the hell we are

do you like living here?

what’s it like working in a library?

so is it poetry or fiction that you write?

hell, i don’t know, marilyn

we finally sit down on flagstaff hill

pitt campus pittsburgh oakland

limestone and neon meshing in the night

marilyn is quiet

we’ve run out of things to say already

i haven’t asked her anything

i mean where to start?

i think this was all exciting back in april

but here in june i wonder what i was waiting for

let’s just sit here for a while, she says

soon the homeless take over the hill

you can hear them grunting in restless sleep

marilyn sits there like we’re having a little picnic

not smack dab in the middle of some hooverville

she’s showing her small town

i bet she’d meander through iraq

as the sun sets and shadows in the distance fade to black

she asks me what i think about tonight’ moon

anticlimactic, i say

to the turn of bottles burps

and vagrant farts in the humid night

anticlimactic? she says sharply

and though i can’t i can still see the look on her face

yes yes, i say

because i can’t find the secret romance in any of this.