Thursday Poem

The Young Men at the Bar are Too Tired Even to Die

We wear our work below our eyes.
How can someone so young be so tired?
my mother asks on voicemail, again.
But I am too tired to call back, too
tired to explain, too tired, even,
to walk home and close my eyes.
When’s the last time the sun rose?
I don’t remember. The only light
I know now is electric and hideous.
The ring on the bartop from my glass
is incomplete, broken like the moon
in the sky that could be in any season,
if I could bring myself to look up.

by Ariel Francisco
from Pank Magazine, Fall/Winter 2016