Fear and Loathing (Comin’ and Goin’)

                I come to party, I show up alone,
I feel the beat on my feet, and I’m soloing.
I sing sunshine hits in the club.
Sunshine hits baby. That’s just how I live, lawd—

                        And Lord was like—
I fled the scene,
done all I possibly could. The way it works is,
sunshine hits something and so, there is something.
Gradually, you become unlike that something

You used to hold.  I had held a cassette tape
in my hands, had held
a church in my hands,   
had held it with heavy hands, had felt love

Like adrenaline, to which no one in the church spoke.   
I had heard music emanating
from a cassette player, had heard it in church,      
had looked into the pastor’s eyes, had held her eyes   

In my hands, had felt her love like a fee.
                                                       Evil eyes,
everyone knows   
what your poems are about. Whatever it is
got me laughing.

Credit

Copyright © 2018 Anaïs Duplan. This poem originally appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Used with the permission of the author.