Theater of the Real by John Amen

Theater of the Real

         for BC & JF

To shrug the draft, he leapt a university ladder,
shaking the rungs of math, piling numbers on his back.
At a karaoke bar under an overpass,
she belted the best version of “In the Pines” he’d ever heard.
He tipped his hat, tugged a red feather from the cityscape,
slamming a double vodkashine at her feet.
He scribbled poems, metronomic rhyme schemes,
serenading her at Dustbowl rest stops, the jukeshacks
along Highway 61. Fine, she said, buy me a BBQ dinner.
He ordered five ambrosia plates, dropped to a knee over espresso.
Roses burst from the walls, critics leapt from their stools,
applauding as she stammered, ok yes. She whittled
her tunes after-hours in a relative’s giftshop. He dissected
The Myerson Conjecture on a circular whiteboard.
They juggled cars & newspaper subscriptions,
insurance policies & wardrobes, gigs & tenure.
Picnics in the Louisville grass.
A photo shoot at the Taj Mahal.
Scrabble & parcheesi under the Eiffel Tower.
Days passed like W2s. Eggs for dinner? he asked.
How about Barbados in January? she replied.
In a balloon over Hollywood, she coughed her best Judy Garland,
as he yelled, bravo! bravo! She slept
eighteen hours straight. Christmas morning,
she forgot her best friend’s name. Later she left
the stove on, left her purse in a birdbath.
He found her wedding ring in the freezer.
She had no idea how it got there.
They drove for hours to a condo on the Pacific.
The sunset draped over a flowery sofa,
painting the white walls orange. He woke at 2am,
doors & windows gaping, he staggered
to the gray shore to find her
rummaging in mounds of kelp, looking
for a credit card. She couldn’t recall his touch,
if he was the one who unzipped her dress in the hotel dark,
cheering as she sang for the moon. He heard
a voice whispering in the dunes. The air brimmed
with fractals & pop choruses, that convulsion of stars.
He turned back to her, but her impression in the sand
had already been flattened by the tide. He figured it was her
out there laughing in the waves, but he couldn’t be sure.

*

John Amen was a finalist for the 2018 Brockman-Campbell Award and the 2018 Dana Award. He was the recipient of the 2021 Jack Grapes Poetry Prize and the 2024 Susan Laughter Myers Fellowship. His poems and prose have appeared recently in Rattle, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Daily, American Literary Review, and Tupelo Quarterly. His sixth collection, Dark Souvenirs, was released by New York Quarterly Books in May 2024.