The front door creaks
louder than the blasting
music, and I pass through
the fog toward the bar.
I know without looking
the torn seats are there
and the crack in the cooler,
the holes in the sheet rock
and peeling layers of different
paint, each color like a different
career or place or self changed.
The floor has the best memory
in any building: marked,
trampled, stained and worn
as a body passing through
years and a city that knows
no mercy. There’s a reason
why nightclubs are so dark,
and my eyes become a parody
of searching flashlights.
I see bodies on the dance floor
twist and twirl clean. It is not
the sins that cost so dearly
but the dreams.

Rob Talbert is awake most nights. He is addicted to booze, bar-b-que, clubs and city lights. His first book of poems, Jagged Tune, is forthcoming this year from Mad Hat Press, and he has published poems in Adroit, Forklift, Ohio, Passages North, Painted Bride Quarterly, Verse Daily and others. This August, Rob will begin the Ph.D. Creative Writing Program at Florida State University.