Tennessee By Jay Passer

She insists

Chivalry is not dead!

after a cab driver

by some miracle of modern technology

opened the cab door for her

It's your cleavage I said

The outright buoyancy

Malibu Barbie with a Tennessee twang

meets

the San Francisco barista poetaster

You're from New York, huh?

Why does everybody ask me that?

Maybe because you can be a real dick?

I didn't know being a dick

had geographical origins

We're depleted after

hungover sex

Entwined

on top of her Kia bunk beds

when the clock-radio

started blaring about a

terrorist attack

on the World Trade Center in New York City

What a coincidence, that's where I'm from!

Shhh! My brother's wife's uncle

works in one of those buildings!

So dramatic

I didn't know anybody in New York

I didn't like New Yorkers

since they were all Yankees fans

Bunch of assholes

Serves 'em right

Oh my god, you're horrible!

How can you hate the entire

population of a city based on

such a childish theory?

Her accent was so

cute

I wanted to fuck it

so I let her punctilious observation go

But there's always an end

and dwelling in it

is a kind of specialty of mine

I broke up with her because she liked to entertain

a retinue of male admirers

before noon on weekend mornings

when I

preferred it quiet

the hammers in my eardrums

from carousing away the night

barely subsided

Stop being such a grouch! So annoying...

We were watching

the last season of The Sopranos

Drinking cheap champagne

and it was raining

when I realized she was just another

in a line of false replacements

for the Chrissie Hyndes and Tatum O'Neals of my youth

I stood up suddenly and walked out

the door

Lit an American Spirit and started up Fremont Ave

towards 45th

I could feel her

behind me

barefoot on the sidewalk in her pjs

shivering and watching my figure recede

I didn't turn around to look back

So dramatic 

The poetry and prose of Jay Passer has appeared in print and online periodicals, magazines and anthologies, in subterranean basements and restroom stalls, cave walls and space shuttles, since 1988. He is the author of 15 collections of words, symbols, diatribes, missives, isms, schisms, rain drizzles and blood fizzles. A cook by trade, he's also dabbled in daubs, photo-montage, reverse feng shui; while flailing at mortician's apprentice, news butcher, and criminal savant. Passer's most recent chap, Son of Alcatraz, released in February of 2024 by Alien Buddha Press, is available from Amazon.