Jim Leftwich, Tales from Imaginary Pasts

Tales from Imaginary Pasts

You're what used to be

called the real thing, he

said. You know that,

right? We were playing

dodge ball behind the

church in a sleepless

dream. You should have

seen the clouds. They

looked like anything

you like. Poetry, I said,

does not participate in

the language game of

being real. We sat down

on the asphalt basketball

court and smoked

a couple of Camel Nons.

​Poets eat fences for breakfast

​Poets eat fences for breakfast,

I said. With that scrap of

barbed wire hanging

from your lip,

you're cuter than Frank O'Hara,

she said. But she was drunk.

People say that kind of thing

when they're drunk.