Poem for the Speakeasy

Of course we’d never have gone.

Any bathtub gin would have been gifted

by an on-the-fringe cousin, any violin-cased

tommy gun bridge-tossed in terror.

But we love the speakeasy not because

we wouldn’t have gone, but because

it wouldn’t have been us going.

We’d have pushed past heavy drapes

and slipped seamlessly into slink,

me a drop-dead moll with eyebrows severe

as a pearl-pursed snubnose, you silent

and spatted with a drink-to-table clink

that means both you’re safe and you’re not.

Look at us there, our hair glossed,

our cigarettes tiny gaslights softening

our full, young faces. Look,our eyes

are firelit. It’s not a cherry-glow reflection,

or our candle’s ragged breathing. It’s not

the gleam of the trumpet bell on stage.

In this place, we’re filled with flame.

We’re hydrogen. We’re phosphorus.

Oh, darling, we say, look at me burning.

Oh, darling, we say, darling, look at me.