Monday 26 May 2014

Experience by Steve Klepetar

“I believe in experience,” he says
regarding his half empty beer, amber
bottle dripping and cold.  “I believe
in the language of  mice, in spaces
between solid walls, melting
mirrors and clocks that tic silently
and lie.  I believe in layers 
of night, whispers beneath a steady 
hum of talk.  I believe we could 
reach between torn seams of bar 
smells and chatter, clinking glasses,
juke box tunes, put our hands 
on something in the ultra-violet range, 
a quiet heart, an invisible voice, a tongue 
made of glass.  This is your last night  
and rain batters the street, green 
and red by the garish sign: 
‘Theatre Lounge – Cocktails – Beer’
this point where our lives divide, where
threads untangle, where our letters
burst for a month, then trickle and fade 
to silence.  I believe in memories 
of taste, this bitter beer, these pretzels 
flaking salt into cheap plastic bowls, 
my ex-wife’s first, chocolate-scented 
kiss, the pea soup  laced with sherry 
I gobbled after working all night 
at the P.O., taste of rain in early May, 
factory grit in the air of this miserable town.

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