End of Side A

It ends because the beginning won’t jumpstart

again: red smudge of a mouth, lipstick everywhere

 

like the afterthought a comet leaves on its way

out. What makes this moment unfold like a fine

 

woman raising herself up from the bathroom floor?

Honky-tonk in the honeyed brown of an eyeball?

 

Perfume & its circus of heart-shaped introductions?

It ends because the needle always winds up in

 

the lead-out, like a man pawing around for broken

spectacles after he wakes in the circle city’s rubble.

 

Hand over hand he paws, through stilted guitar

picks & abandoned stilettos, raised skirts & rocks

 

glasses as chipped & smudged as the topography

of a skipping record. He could be Albright

 

himself, foraging the still life swish of low rise

tutus & skyscrapers cracked in the twisted

 

aftermath of a smile. Even without glasses,

he remembers her in high style: magnanimously

 

coming down the blue & violet threads of night,

her green dress clashing with the bathroom tile.

 

—Adrian Matejka (Monroe County)

This poem originally appeared in Poetry.

Adrian Matejka is the author of The Devil’s Garden (Alice James Books, 2003), Mixology (Penguin Books, 2009), which was a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series, and The Big Smoke (Penguin Books), forthcoming in May 2013. He is the recipient of two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards and fellowships from Cave Canem and the Lannan Foundation. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry 2010, Ploughshares, and Poetry, among other journals and anthologies. He teaches creative writing at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Indiana Humanities is posting a poem a day from Indiana poets in celebration of National Poetry Month.