By Michael Colbert

Those nights were on fire
after Lana Del Rey

We wanted the beach at sunset but turned right
for the intracoastal, sunset

shimmying along a wobbly plank for the better view.
Lone fishermen

Drawbridge posts catching headlights
so the reflections twinkled as teen girls with ice cream cones

jingled keys to their boat and rode away
into their charmed life, motor churning.

There’s something magical to this city, we agree
almost three years too late, moving here marked

by cockroaches and August / august downpours.
I miss Dong Beach and I miss

this moment before it’s even over.
Salt–fresh from Sunday’s Atlantic dunk

neither of us has rolled on deodorant for days.
It’s time to go. No vacancies

at the motel suites spelling
Summer Sands on the roof

so we go the other way instead
of pulling the U–ey.

This beach town screwed blacklights
into their lampposts and the streets glow violet.

Tonight it’s not Lana but Sam Cooke, Dionne Warwick
and when I could cry, how

beautiful this night has become
I breathe it instead.

The beach still isn’t far.
Only this barrier island away.

By Michael Colbert

Sheets too hot
cold
switch sides
back
pillow flip
try jacking off
nothing puts me back to sleep.
One AM it’s just me
the dog
and George Forman.
Look how this pillow flattens
in the Food Saver.
Hear George Forman talk
lean mean fat grilling machines
I thought he was famous
for foot grills, not boxing
and outside someone sold the sky
a wooden bowl to use as the moon
you know the type. I’d shuffle
Teddy Grahams in those shallow
salad bowls at my grandmother’s
during Wheel & Jeopardy
My sister loved infomercials best.
Here’s a gadget for any problem
Flip channels. Skip laugh tracks.
Vacuum seal leftovers for your life alone.
Maybe there’s something for these late nights
Maybe I just need a boyfriend
pillow to spoon me back to bed

By Ken Norris

It’s an adult movie
portraying adult situations.

You know how it is —
a young girl
living with her sister and brother–in–law
falls in love with a married man.

We all understand.

And the test of character
is coming to understand
why suffering exists in this world.

And going for the Seconal.

And then there’s Baxter,
blithely explaining
how he almost blew his brains out
because he was in love
with a married woman.

I was there once,
on the lip of the crease,
trying to get right
with the moral universe.

We all understand.

How the dream of love
can twist you up inside
until you can’t recognize yourself,

and desperation sets in,
and you take the wrong path,
until the moment you see
there’s something better,
and you go for it,
as any adult would do.

By Ken Norris

The early morning darkness enfolds. In the next room
they’re discussing plans to secure the Maltese Falcon.
When dawn comes Effie will be here with the black bird
wrapped in newspaper.

Does the ship sail
from Honolulu? I can’t remember, but think so.
Dead captains litter our lives.

I was always on the verge
of something important. Things were always going to change
in big ways. The song would deliver, the poem
would change the way we see flower petals falling
forever.

Loneliness puts its arm around us
all. You in your lonely room and I in mine.
And the world changed itself. It went on
without us, in spite of us, to spite us
in our pride.

The black bird arrives
and I’m outside of the story. It’s a fake.
Cairo and the Fat Man take a hike. Wilmer
takes the fall, Spade pushes Bridget over the falls.
A man has got to do something, in the face of a dead partner,
in the realm of fading dreams.
When dawn comes.