Requiem
Stumble in the just dark
to light blunts in the backyard,
we brave the mosquitos and marshland
Of Long Island.
By the inground pool,
time becomes taffy,
pulls from the cherry bowl, taste
acrid ash and cough.
Passing ghosts between us,
a kind of stupored communion,
where leftover cheap chocolate smacks
of finer things.
I could sit in that cheetah-print beanbag for hours
and maybe I do,
watching Emma’s outstretched arms
conduct harmonies only she can hear.
When the only residue of the evening
is the lemon scent of Lysol,
the ping-pong table freshly scrubbed of beer,
I listen with closed eyes —
could swear I hear singing.
The Bucketlister 