Cathy Porter

The Overpass

I thought it was you
On the Dodge Street overpass
But your face changed faces
As the rain poured down

I swear that was your voice
In O’Toole’s the night you graduated
But I must have had too many
Because you would never sing karaoke

At the gas station, I know it was you
Topping off your tank
You looked straight through me
I still have the scar

Sometimes I feel you’re right in
The next room
Or you’ll send me a card in the mail
But nobody does that anymore

When sleep is elusive, I drive around town
Imagine you next to me
Raving about Stevie Ray Vaughn
The concert we saw just before he died
He was on fire that night

We’ll orbit around each other
But not once will we speak
And in between facts and fiction
We’ll waste time on habits
We just can’t shake

Just Flurries

This blast of snow is not helping –
just flurries they said, but my windshield
is covered.

And then the text. We just talked
the day before. Planning our next
coffee date. The snow gets heavier.

Our last lunch. You treated me
that day; next one was on me. The long
goodbye in the parking lot.

No more plans. You took them with
you. Along with a piece of me.

I wish I took a picture that day.
Of you; of us.

Vanilla Fun

Another trip to our way-too-familiar
second home. The waiting room is sold-out:
blood work, X-rays, head wounds – heart
monitors that beep non-stop; nurses
on overload. We know the drill, the wait
for good or bad. The guy next to me is
drunk and crying; tells me he’s been here
five hours. We’re at hour two and ready
to crack – and the fun’s just getting started –
but we’re over this type of fun. We want
boring, vanilla fun – fun that keeps you home
at night, with nothing to do but click the
remote, fight over the last slice. Tonight,
we’d give anything for some vanilla and
crappy reruns – stuff ourselves with
cardboard pizza until we doze off. But you
never appreciate fun until it disappears –
and all that’s left is a pile of bills, and
machines that never stop beeping.

 

Cathy Porter’s poetry has appeared in Plainsongs, Homestead Review, California Quarterly, Trajectory, Cottonwood, Nerve Cowboy, Chiron Review, and various other journals. She has several chapbooks available from Finishing Line Press, Dancing Girl Press, and Maverick Duck Press. Shuffle And Go is her latest collection from Bottlecap Press. Cathy has been nominated for several Pushcart prizes. She lives in Omaha, Nebraska.