Reunion with a Friend Lost for 38 Years
Meet me at the pub’s fire pit.
I have a wife and you do too.
I consider this a test.
Who picks up the tab?
I have a wife and you do too.
Twenty minutes late is fashionable.
Who picks up the tab?
Your hair and beard are silver.
Twenty minutes late is fashionable.
We eat beef and our women eat chicken.
Your hair and beard are silver.
Our better halves gossip about Oregon.
You pay with Visa, ask for half in cash.
I consider this a test.
You stroll the boardwalk and vanish.
Meet me at the pub’s fire pit.
Incarceration
I drive by where they hold you. Your campus resembles a business park—concrete cubes sporting thin vertical windows. Glass ink black, yet I can see my car passing through. You’re tucked in the Theo Lacy wing. Grounds boast resort-green lawns, eucalyptus, roses in raised beds.
Across the street, the ash trees bend. Hydrants are milky-white. Chain-wire fences enclose a field with blue end zones. Goal posts the color of hydrants. Remember your touchdown in the big game? The cheerleaders loved you.
I hang a left and head back to the freeway. Clouds kill the sun. Shadows roll over the forgotten and tumble into the sea.
——
Kirby Wright’s futuristic novel is forthcoming in Fall 2013. He has an MFA from SFSU.
VAGABOND CITY 