First Night Out

I’m googling the nightclubs I used to frequent in pursuit of user-submitted content: out of focus, an embarrassing use of flash but it hints at the smell of fog machines and the click of sticky-drink dance floors against shoes. The way people go outside to smoke and come back inside to flirt. For me, it’s a kind of worship: it’s an invisible thing you just have to believe in. Like seeing is believing. Like dancing about architecture, I guess. But I need that energy around me again, to envelope me. It wasn’t like any of us planned on never going out again. There are songs we have never heard thumping from a soundsystem and we are aching to feel them to feel something. So, when all of this is over, I’d like a fresh start, a reboot. Let me buy you a drink. We could escalate briefly in a bathroom stall before one of us pumps the brakes, not here. Let’s settle our tabs, exchange numbers and each go home alone, just for old time’s sake.

Cut Off, La.

the swamplands sound like a song & sound like police & sound like fish flopping on the line & sound like a bug zapper that texture of grass, mud, critters if the gators don’t spot ya first, sure don’t stick around to find out how long it takes them to what is that country song? “Ocean Front Property In Arizona?” the whole mess has nothin’ on your #1 goal each night: finish the damn thing, find your way, be back home in time for supper. fold up, pack it in, nothing extra left behind: no faded candy bar wrapper stuck to a baseboard after a flood (take your best guess where the shortcut is in Cut Off) stay in love with the high grass & those fuschia sunsets, the clay you call mud & the mudbugs you call crawfish you sent me a postcard after you left that read: give Louisiana my greetings, tidings & regrets