Chapter V, in Which I Lament My Breakup and Go On Grindr

After Michelle Robinson

Hanging around the bar off Milby Street, drinking daiquiris,
I realize I may never attain love—not even the ring-bearing guy
could blossom my core. Life fancies me as a poet,
but I only know how words disperse at the final syllable,
how each letter is a tendril of ink that fades.

Now, I have a bare finger and a pessimism that simmers; the dread
of stumbling down a street with a guy, heat
splitting the tarmac, before he leaves, and the asphalt
fades into thickets of a forest: a density I must face alone.

I hitchhike with the guy I hooked up with from New York,
desperation; he takes all his friends from dating apps.
He likes cheap weed and old movies (an extra in Hocus Pocus 3
he brags). But it ends unhappily, and I’ve only a read receipt
on my phone.
Oh Je pense à toi! That flutter in the mind,
some taste that leaves only the hint of last night’s wine.

Alexander Lazarus Wolff's writing appears online in The Best American Poetry website and Poets.org, and in the North American Review, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere. A recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, he teaches and studies at the University of Houston, where he holds the Inprint MD Anderson Foundation Fellowship. You can read more of his work at www.alexanderlazaruswolff.com.