The glasses looked like ice cubes

and the whiskey tasted of flowers.

There should have been an abundance of customers

after the showers, on a clear, carless night,

with the violet stripe sky and Cuban radio.

---

They must have grown stubborn. They liked it inside,

moling and melding into old velour, 

ordering booze off a bike deliverer 

with a whicker basket and copperface

and a cairn terrier barking amongst the bottles. 

Anything for five stars. Anything novel, or nostalgic, 

in this town.

Or they forgot. 

They forgot how to sit sucking it in, how to talk

while the bartender shook things, how to put on shoes,

and how to care for any of it.

---

It had become an exhibit that you sit in, 

looking through the glass at passersby.

You could expect to be ogled and photographed,

joined or condemned, but what you wanted

was to look natural, like a mannequin, and cool

Or had the lower face gone out of style?

---

Had going out? It’s funny how on TV people rarely talk

except for face to face. It’s more lively that way. 

More charged.

But try it opposite the cathode ray, 

and it’s high maintenance. Risky. 

Did your friends resent you for their bras and sandals?

Or were they strapped for oxygen, sucking in

for a host with a buzz cut and wet-looking sneakers?

Welcome back.