YEAR OF THE GOLD RAT

I left my mom behind. She’s still in Queens paying rent on the same apartment I grew up in. There are mouse traps in the corner and under broken radiators. The winters are too cold and the summers are too hot. The windows won’t stay open. You look out and it’s brick walls and the neighbor’s kitchen. I sit in my garden in a hard chair with the sun on my back, eyes closed, trying to meditate, to focus on nothing, but really I’m fantasizing about fingering the girl from the bar while getting blown, my fingers wet, the sound of stink bugs landing on the window nets. The bodies keep piling up on the news. An ambulance came for the young doctor down the hall. “They brought out the body bag in the middle of the night,” she texts me. She texts all the time, every day, about everything. Sends me photos of empty subway cars on her way to the doctor. Breasts, teeth, eyes, glands, she’s got enough appointments to last her a lifetime. “Don’t get old,” she tells me. I promise her not to though with the way things are going promises won’t be necessary. There’s no money coming in, no work, no food in the supermarkets, and no one is coming to help. Her friend meets her downstairs with leftovers while the Turkish super with a cigarette dangling from his lips waters the plants, complaining about his bones. The days keep going like this.

Brendan Press is a poet, short story writer, and bartender. He released Beating The Drum, his first collection of poetry, in 2020. Born and raised in Queens, NY, he now calls the Hudson Valley home.