Charlie Farmer, Dangerous Young Debonair

Am I Not Lucky?

Every Thursday,

I visit the High to see the Veiled Rebecca.

Someone took a slab of marble and did that.

There are nights I don't want to sleep in my bed,

And I pack a bag of books and take a cab.

And I begin.

I carry three books--Gatsby, Meditations in an Emergency, and Jesus's Son.

Last week, a girl took me to her home and in bed as I unpacked,

She asked to read me to sleep.

Fools

We fooled them.

Dressed up, we almost belonged,

You, 19, wearing your dead mother's heels,

Bouncing checks for a two hundred dollar dress,

I borrowing a skinny tie and using your bobby pin as a tie clip,

Ordering duck confit and wine we could not pronounce.

Now we have leftovers, postcards, 

and people mistaking us for being in love, important.

Your Birthday and Apple Juice

Each morning in traffic,

I think of how you will wear your hair.

You arrange it three ways--

Straight, tucked behind your ears.

Curled, Gatsby, pure grace.

Or braided, and just so,

My favorite.

You are one year older today.

And you are going to break so many goddamned hearts.

A Capricorn since 1978, Charlie Farmer was born in Forsyth, Georgia. After years of teaching  English in Milledgeville, Georgia, he finally discovered the virtues of barsitting with a drink, pen, and stacks of cocktail napkins at hand.