COHEN: A GLASS AND A HALF OF PINOT NOIR 

Pop clack clink here we go mother. 

The things we do for the ones we love, contend 

with spoken word and get love out of the way. 

A little Greek chorus with your micro-infidelities? 

(I did, I went through your phone goddammit). 

I don’t want it darker, I don’t like it charred (both steak and my back-meat). I don’t plan on getting drunk. 

CALE: 2 GLASSES OF PINOT NOIR 

See now. I like how he syncopates. I like how he says “love 

is not a victory march,” in the manner of wardens that count aloud 

the final ten steps to the jing-jing-jingle of keys, like wives 

steeling themselves to dramatically rip their rollers out, like 

he was in a war once and it thinned out his throat so now 

all his sentences limp to a lilting end 

(that’s an analogy for the way you fuck me). 

You look confrontational, darling. I dare you to disagree. 

Bastard. 

WAINWRIGHT: 3 GLASSES OF PINOT NOIR + HALF A HEINEKEN

I feel like. I think. I like this. 

But you look like you don’t because you can’t improve on perfection, and you only like songs you can sing yourself. It fills the sacs of your gums, seeps through teeth to colonize breathable air, and I sit at the back table like a shellfish-spoon as you duet like you left (misplaced) your lungs in your partner’s (not I) chest. 

Don’t look so wounded now. Here, 

spit in my mouth. 

We can still salvage the evening. 

BUCKLEY: 4 GLASSES OF PINOT NOIR + A HEINEKEN + HALF A GLASS OF YOUR WHISKEY 

Remember; we were fifteen once. We must have been 

in your grandfather’s barn, crushing grapes under the soles of our feet. You hear this delay, this upward croon, roof-shingle-smooth, like grapeskin on 

your tongue that I picked off, and in return you squeezed a grape down my throat, and called me “Persephone” 

(brush up on your Ovid, will you?). 

This delay, this upward croon, it is the smell of you lying next to me in bed, when

your hair whispers against the pillowcase, and your eyelashes brush your cheek. I turn my head and whisper I will kill you and you say next time, next time. But your tongue is purple, split down to ballooning grape-flesh. You smell like a lie and so do I, because I’m tired of this 

fucking song.



K.S. is an aspiring writer/poet with a green thumb, and an immense love for Rochester garbage plates. One of the aforementioned is a lie.