It’s beautiful midnight bright. Think:
Cheesecake Factory. The city has gone casino

carpet colored. They have renovated the sky
into a Footlocker uniform. It must’ve been curfew

weather, Cuyahoga overcast. The river ripped up into jackknife
black lines. It’s been a decade since I saw you in your briefcase

feelings. I could never make sense of your fluorescent
interiors. Remember? The whole garbage bag walled

off bathroom stall flickered with potential. The hallway
glass throbbed under our pace. Remember? We were in the casino

at the bus stop licking gum out of the carpet. Remember? The crazy quilt
of sweat across your brow was also a city on a hill. Remember? You threw

that party when Reagan died & everybody came but still nobody killed Bush.
Somebody brought tamales. We drank Steel Reserve 211 in the abandoned steel mill.

Remember? I let the tamales fly out of me like the scarab beetles in The Mummy.
We spent the intervening decade of shame learning how to fly out the city.

Kept the merch, left the dirt & gravel driveways to be some other kid’s diorama river.
The seasons are all fucked up, the birds don’t even know when to fly south anymore.

The petit bourgeois has stolen flight from the birds. Autumn has been replaced with falling real estate prices. Outside Quicken Loans Arena the
scalpers walk a picket line. They chant “No Lebron, No Peace!” Our tiny gods & the seasons

are leaving. In Cleveland, leaving is both the season & shorthand for class treason.
The same guys burning Lebron’s jerseys let cop cars glide by unburnt. The cop on the picket line

is running for president. The mayor has kissed Dan Gilbert’s championship ring. The
Footlocker Uniform has kissed us all. The Reagan memorial assassinations

have not yet commenced, but when they do, the casino bright sky will no longer bow
to the people, though we may never get the seasons back.

Brendan Joyce is a busboy in Cleveland, Ohio. He is the author of Character Limit (2019), a collection of poetry originally published as a twitter thread. He can be found on Twitter at @nicetryofficer.