After Party
The Hello Kitty piñata’s head swings from the pepper tree— a sweet decapitation. Glitter across the rental table & pink paper flowers wilt in the succulents. This is the stale beer & cigarettes of seven-year-olds. “My fluffy puppy is so soft” still means “my fluffy puppy is so soft.” I’m seducing my wife the way good men of my generation do, by rinsing blue & red sticky plates & taking out heavy cake trash. I’m celebrating their lack of cool. No fights over girls or boys to save face, just face paint, just little leopards everywhere.
Credit
Copyright © 2018 Noah Blaustein. Used with permission of the author. This poem originally appeared in The Southern Review, Summer 2018.
Author
Noah Blaustein
Noah Blaustein received his MFA from the University of Massachusetts. He is the author of Flirt (University of New Mexico Press, 2013) and After Party, forthcoming from University of New Mexico Press in 2019.
Date Published: 2018-07-01
Source URL: https://poets.org/poem/after-party