The Romantic Mode Overheard

Since the sky's a bad dream-all mist and low ceilings-what started out
as an idea of eggs, slumped into the empty booth of a crowded Belmont diner:
the smoking section, sandwiched between too-young-to-know-better
and the constant-mistake. How to romanticize this vinyl and Formica

that's been so thoroughly commodified? Waif and waitress, the scattered
Mohawks of punk’s last stand, brokedown drag queens, over-caffeinated
undergrads all spelling their conversations out across fries, pies, the obligatory
steaming cup: those histories of philosophy, those faulted yearnings,

pledges of fidelity, privilege of skin and ignorance. Youth is syndicated,
is on five nights a week. Please, stop talking past each other. Love's
a broken record, kids. Love's a lucky break—a face you know.
Your ten thousand hearts will break tonight, and your hearts

are well rehearsed: practiced all month dropping glasses, vases,
bottles of blood-red wine, half empty. I wish it could have been different.
I thought we were so true, you know? Eyes so green they wrecked me.
Take it outside. The mercury is steady, the mist is wished for and easily forgets.

Carl Marcum was born in Nogales, Arizona, and raised in Tucson. He received his MFA from the University of Arizona and has been the recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. His first collection of poems, Cue Lazarus, was published in 2001; a second collection, “Constellation,” is nearing completion. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at DePaul University in Chicago.