Pulp Poem

It was one of those lonely, downbeat nights. 
You know the kind, when you find out 
your baby ran off with some butter-tongued 
sax player who blew into town for a quick gig, 
the type whose eyes always draw four aces, 
and you feel like yesterday’s evening edition 
of The Splitsville Gazette, and just as midnight 

drops its calling card, you’re out roaming 
the streets, and the whole neon-drunk city 
sounds like a song Hoagy Carmichael couldn’t 
bear to write, and then you hear a police siren 
and a couple of gun shots, and you think, 
Well, at least somebody’s out of his misery, 
and before you know it, it’s two a.m., 

and you’re sitting by yourself in Frank’s Diner, 
and your poached eggs are as cold as the empty 
half of your double bed, and you see her two- 
timer’s face in your hash browns, and it hits you 
like a punchline that no matter how much sugar 
you add to your cup of joe, you’ll never rid 
your mouth of the bitter taste of heartbreak. 

Poem Beginning with a Reference to the Painting Known as the Chandos Portrait (1600–1610), Attributed to John Taylor

The Bard of Avon—if, indeed, 
it is the Bard—looks rakish with 
a gold hoop earring in his left lobe. 
I thought about getting an earring 
back in the mullet-&-mustache- 
Qiana-shirt Me Decade. Decade 
was my first Neil Young album. 
When I was young, I had to visit 
my pediatrician for weekly needles. 
Sharon Needles is a Pittsburgh 
drag queen and friends with glam 
trans rocker Jayne County. 
I grew up in Middlesex County, 
New Jersey. I didn’t care for jerseys 
or the shots in my left bicep to treat 
my allergies to grass and cats. 
I was a Cat Stevens fan in college, 
songs like “Angelsea” and “Boy 
with a Moon and Star on His Head.” 
I suffered a severe head injury in ’08. 
It tossed my emotions in a blender 
and threw off my sense of balance. 
I used to eat Balance bars.  
The Chocolate Craze nutrition bar 
contains 18 grams of sugar. Gram 
Parsons was a member of the Byrds 
for Sweetheart of the Rodeo, which 
opened and closed with Bob Dylan 
“Basement Tapes” songs. I saw Bob 
Dylan with Tom Petty in New York 
the summer of ’86. Ronnie Wood 
joined on “Like a Rolling Stone.” 
Eighties Bob looked like Stoner Bob, 
sleeveless T-shirts and leather vests, 
a dangle earring in his left lobe. 

JOEL ALLEGRETTI

Joel Allegretti is the author of, most recently, Platypus (NYQ Books, 2017), a collection of poems, prose, and performance texts, and Our Dolphin (Thrice Publishing, 2016), a novella. He is the editor of Rabbit Ears: TV Poems (NYQ Books, 2015), which the Boston Globe called “cleverly edited” and “a smart exploration of the many, many meanings of TV.”