The bar attracts its failures, the strangest get in free,
one man calls himself the infectious consonant,
he cancels every engagement, blaming his grandmother’s face,
and nothing sickens him
except the nausea he gets when looking at thorns
The black and white lips by the jukebox
spray out a bond of laughter,
they belong to a woman who urges us to buy her candles,
then her sleeping book, where we will come
to believe in the power of flowers in an ambitious agent’s handset
Meanwhile, the aged singer waits, she lives
in an instrument broken beyond mummification,
her friends will come under the neon canopy at midnight
to bring her another boy full of damage, yet
they will ruin one another swimming through his nightmares
Ben Nardolilli currently lives in New York City. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, Danse Macabre, The 22 Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, The Northampton Review, Local Train Magazine, The Minetta Review, and Yes Poetry. He blogs at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com and is trying to publish his novels.