A good friend is animated tonight
because he thinks he’s in love,
dares to think this time it will be
reciprocated. The clamor at the bar
matches the clamor of the city—
this is where we go to take stock,
to repair, to celebrate even better.
All the voices that insist they can change
the world and themselves, words
and beer on lips beautiful and on lips
chapped hard by having to come
from behind just to hang on for dear life—
the photos of the martyred president
watch us from the walls, lamps shining
like little moons, my good friend
luminous in his rumpled suit of beginning.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 24, Issue 5.
Tim Suermondt is the author of five full-length collections of poems, the latest: Josephine Baker Swimming Pool from MadHat Press, 2019. He has published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Stand Magazine, Smartish Pace, The Fortnightly Review, Poet Lore and Plume, among many others. He lives in Cambridge (MA) with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.
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