Possible Reasons Smashburger Closed Down
George at Pep Boys says it was probably drugs.
When you see a SWAT that's usually what it is. A franchise
can do whatever. Long as they call a cheeseburger
a Classic Smash, they can call the local special Savior. I have
these hoof-stomp-in-muddy-lawn Saturdays, these
my-head-under-netted-roots-of-that-grass
Shit-urdays. See, I can call anything anything too, the way
a man who was in love with my ex called the uvula
that hangball thing, the night I visited her at a hotel
which had mostly nothing to do with him or my feelings or this
smudge of a story, but I will hold a grudge against anything
so fuck the Marriott. But really come on, I wanted him
to steal her & I’d say I’d known a loss that wasn’t my fault.
Instead, today, two intestinal vines hang
over my side of the fence. I will not describe them better.
Go find vines & stare. See your life different. Never come back.
& see, I said the way & carried you through that threshold
to my other life. & see, it's the same fucking life.
I loved a woman & I knew it. She Sharpied insults
on the sock I forgot & mailed it back. She painted my face, opened
hers when she’d cum. I kept my head, when she farted, in her lap
& baked her ziti. Fucked mornings till we didn’t, we didn’t fight &
our mothers met once & were reciprocally unnerved.
In one life, all that & the same life I packed fast, told her
everything people who wouldn’t want to & can’t know say
they’d want to know. The knob clicked, her bolt locked,
I drove to my brother’s apartment & slept well enough.
Then I did it again. & again & so on as one does until tonight
& belatedly bury my shithead days in New Jersey, a state the dead
can't leave for they’ve no money & I vow I’ll come back only
on these what-am-I-doing-wherefore-good-lord Saturdays when
I find myself in the parking lot of a liquor store where I bought
beer when I was different years both & either in love & or one
sharp shard of heart this is getting / out of my hands now.
I think the franchisee doesn't know what to say. I think they called
SWAT on themself. I think one day you just stop opening the door.
Tim Lynch has poems forthcoming or published with tenderness, yea, Connotation Press, Mead & more. He has directed workshops for young writers through Rutgers University in Camden, NJ & conducts interviews for Tell Tell Poetry.