Brendan Lorber

Remember where we’re parked

I took a class after school in advanced aftermath       or something we can

agree on as a time capsule       even if the contents are just 100 years

of sandwiches and yourself       hoping to skip the scene       where your
morning alarm gets a narrator’s voice upgrade        that says this day began
like any other        The problem with naming days       is they want to be wild

talismans of a larger ritual         preserved by burning       and made part of us

through the smoke       same with living in impossible cities       because

visiting them is so much more exhausting        A lifetime ago you didn’t say

a lifetime ago every 15 minutes       but disasters didn’t have to take a number

a lifetime ago in Washington Square Park      Genya and I embraced against

a new worst trouble ever       but now we wave at a distance       through the

shared liability of our hypomanic states       Another lifetime        I shared

a wine with Matvei in a can factory basement       but now even he cancels

the afterparty       The sinkhole eats the car        Remember where we’re parked

Brendan Lorber is a writer, visual artist, and teacher. He is the author of If this is paradise why are we still driving? (subpress, 2018) and several chapbooks, most recently Unfixed Elegy and Other Poems. His visual art is in The Museum of Modern Art, The Free Black Women’s Library, Artists Space NYC, The Free Library of Philadelphia, The Woodland Pattern Center, The Scottish Poetry Library, and in private collections. He teaches fantasy cartography and lives in a little observatory in Brooklyn.