Holiday Party 2017

You might have been standing on the beach
in Silver Lake with your soon-to-be-ex-lover
while I numbed myself in the ancient
basement of the bar where I worked

on Old World Third Street—doing lines,
downing a bottle of red wine with an elephant
on the label, dipping my licked finger into a baggie
of crystalline molly as alcoholic rats chewed taps

of Spotted Cow. As you considered a move
to the Pacific Coast, a last-ditch effort
for you two, I lived in an East Side January,
considering only my own mouth,

how my teeth chattered themselves back to life
during an endless comedown from key bumps
in the bathroom, cab rides in pre-dawn blackness,
biting walks in lake effect wind.