One Night Without Realism by Corey Mesler

“Gather the broken pieces, connect them: these are the only things we have to work with.”

                        --William Goyen

It was Joey Dee doing “Wing-Ding”

on the Roulette label

and Erin just asked if the roof

of the past was still so far

away. I put another plate of cold

cuts on the back of the nudist

at the foot of the davenport.

Jen said she thought the royalty she

knew weren’t up to royalty

standards. Rip nodded like a

marionette. The movie started

but we had all seen it. It was the one

where Ann Sheridan strips us all

of our pretensions. Later Erin and I em-

barked on a foolish osculation.

The lights came on for the last song.

It was Barbara Mason singing “Keep

Him” on the Arctic label.  It

was angel music, the kind we died for.