I’ve drunk beer all day in these
cottonwoods,

and the snow falling

in Boston, the rain full of books

in the back seat of the car, last
year’s and the year before and the holes
still burned in them

as it snows on and on

As I burn up here in the square middle of the sunlight and dust and dusty leaves fallen
in the beer blown up
soaked my pants through to the crotch.
The rotten apple of the gutter in the snow,
and the books I tried to get rid of, to leave behind
leave and burn never to use again—
are in the back of the car now,
in me again, in the snow and the unending
beer and the leaves and the thought of that rotten apple
you threw away trying a bite
as you looked at me from the sofa and wanted
to sleep with me, and I didn’t know how to

but left, left you

in the same snow. Drunk and no way
to get out of the
drunk and no way to get out drunk all day
under the burning cottonwoods.

Originally published in White Wall Review 40 (2016)