Glyn Maxwell

Test for the Old Smile, they’re going to roast it— it’ll have to keep its ends up all night, for the secretary says she finds it creepy, and the golfing partner says you got that right, and the rival says it’s fake, and the ambitious junior makes his point with a few slides, and the protege the Smile was always sweet to walks up and says it turns his insides. They harp on it, the bosses and the buddies, and things get even better by these lights, which is to say it’s shredded like a secret, which is to say it’s one of the great nights; and folks are saying so while they’re still roasting: they cry out to the Smile and it smiles back, like something huge is burdening a hammock, or is until you hear a frightful crack.— And then you better run like you saw nothing. And then you better run like you weren’t there. There is a line, it’s long and isn’t smiling. You won’t believe me when I tell you where.

Do me my elegy now, or I'll scrawl the thing I scrawl as you're going or screw in a ball when you're gone, Or you and I write unaware in each other's tongue That you or I ever set foot . . . Or do what our son And/or little daughter got done: got our brilliant names Pricily grooved in marble by one skilled In times of loss; dream iridescent dreams It's that first Saturday. Let this hour be filled With anything but the case, so that Time the clerk Goes panting in horror from gremlin to error to glitch And his screen is stripes and he knows he saved his work In one of a billion files but fuck knows which, And he lets us alone or, at worst, as we tiptoe by, Feels we're familiar, can't for the world say why.