Open Mic at Lunas

In defense of the drunk at Luna's Café,
the beautiful woman did a lot of talking
about blood and bruises and cum.
Her poems were committed to memory,
she waved long, graceful fingers, widened
her eyes. Emerson, on the other hand,
read from his table in the corner.
He told us that yesterday Leopold
wrote his poems. Tomorrow
he'll be Muir, but today Emerson
lives in the city where he cannot
climb the giant Douglas fir
in a wind storm, lament shooting
the wolf. He can only think
like a building or a bus.
Emerson finishes his reading, hugs
his stuffed orange dog, bows
to the crowd. All the while, a fellow
with wire rimmed glasses,
a pill box hat, and a hunched back
shakes a cow bell. Then, a woman
with an accent that begins British
and ends Scottish reads from Miss Manners.
My friend Nancy is next,
prompting the man in the corner
to write a sex poem about her
called "This is Not a Sex Poem."
Now it's my turn.  I carefully
choose a poem that ends
"Fuck you poem."
A wise choice, it seems,
because the pill box man rings
his bell for all it's worth,
and the drunk rushes the stage.
"Fabulous," says the drunk,
"Barbaric suburban" he calls
my poem or perhaps me.
Then he adds, "But don't
bother to send out, literary
journals take only one
percent." This concludes
a night at Luna's. Three
shakes of the cow bell for
the other 99 percent.

Imagine

My lover wants me to turn
over. Striped light
crosses his face-blind
shadows interpret moonlight.
I remember a line
from a poem-different heads
on different bodies-
I shake my head,
refuse to turn, lie
on my stomach.
He doesn't see stars
for fireflies, bars hanging
across the night wall.
He won't imagine
the windows of my body
open, see how they swallow
moon like the dawn sky.
Another face will not
hover over mine.
My lover doesn't have
a poet's imagination.
But I do.

Suzanne Roberts is an English instructor at Lake Tahoe Community College and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Nevada Reno in Literature and the Environment. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in ZYZZYVA, The Hurricane Review, The California Quarterly, TETYC, Poetry Motel, Spillway, Branches Quarterly, The Banyan Review, The Adirondack Review, and Thorny Locust. A poem has also been selected for the anthology The Best of Branches 2004. She also recently won the MacMillan award for "The best piece of creative writing on Nevada" from the University of Nevada, Reno.

Email: Suzanne Roberts

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