Update

by William Taylor Jr.

Annie Spratt

Me and my 1990s indie rock heart,

my Charles Baudelaire heart,

my first to leave the dinner table heart,

my Neil Young guitar solo heart,

we’re still doing the best we can, at least some of the time.

Me and my never liked Smashing Pumpkins heart,

my sneak out the back door of the break room

and never come back heart,

my torn and faded posters in search of lost cats heart,

my Laura Palmer’s Theme heart,

my sit in the corner of the back row heart,

we still mean all those things we never said.

Me and my J.D. Salinger heart,

my Charlie Brown Christmas heart,

my Jerry Lewis Telethon heart,

my Anne Sexton heart,

we’re broken to shit but still looking for some quiet trouble

as long as we can make it home in time for dinner.

Me and my 5 dollars worth of sad songs on the jukebox heart,

my Lost Highway heart,

my Richard Brautigan San Francisco Heart,

my Brothers Karamazov heart,

my one last drink at 3 a.m. heart,

we wrote one more poem about you

even though we told you we were done.

My Charles Bukowski Sherwood Anderson heart,

my falling asleep to the parents fighting heart,

my tiny hotel room in New Orleans heart,

my half frozen microwave burrito heart,

my mixtape recorded from the radio heart,

we’re restless but looking for a place to sit awhile.

Me and my Santa Cruz goth club heart,

my shoplifted porno mags heart,

my Incredible Hulk Olivia Newton John

Winona Ryder heart,

my Black Sabbath’s first four albums heart,

we’ll meet you at the usual place after everyone else

has gone to bed, and we’ll show up this time I swear.

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William Taylor Jr. lives and writes in San Francisco. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, and a volume of fiction. His work has been published widely in literary journals, including Rattle, The New York Quarterly, and The Chiron Review. He was a recipient of the 2013 Kathy Acker Award, and edited Cocky Moon: Selected Poems of Jack Micheline (Zeitgeist Press, 2014). His latest poetry collection, The People Are Like Wolves to Me, is available from Roadside Press.