"Should You Ever Read This Poem" by Stuart Dischell
[audio mp3="http://barnstormjournal.org/content/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/should-you-ever-read-this-poemdischell.mp3"][/audio]Flying home from LaGuardiaBuckled in my seat, I scratchedMy palm and recollectedThe glove I lost last night.I took it off to wave goodbyeBut your head already turnedDown the subway stairs. SomeoneNew was in your life. A per-fect specimen from a richFamily background, a militaryMan. No less. Telling me, your faceWent incandescent. An honestPerson, you spared me little--.At the party you were with meWhatever that meant,And walking down BroadwayI took your arm and you let me.We talked of how good it wasTo still hang out, then I mustHave lost my glove.People offered drugs and sexAs I walked back to my hotel,Feeling bad for myself the wayYou know I do and how you hateThe drama in me you create.Low music played in the lobbyAnd elevator. Your voiceWas still inside my room.I searched my raincoat againAnd phoned you in the morning before boarding.Should you ever read this poem,Don't call me back.Stuart Dischell is the author of four books of poetry; Good Hope Road, a 1991 National Poetry Series Selection, (Viking, 1993), Evenings & Avenues (Penguin, 1996), Dig Safe (Penguin, 2003), and Backwards Days (Penguin, 2007), and two chapbooks; Animate Earth (Jeanne Duval Editions, 1988), and Touch Monkey (Forklift, Ink, 2012). He has also received honors from the Pushcart Prize, the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and has been published in The Atlantic, The New Republic, Agni, Ploughshares, Slate, and The Kenyon Review, among others. His anthologized work includes Essential Pleasures, Hammer and Blaze, and Good Poems. He is currently a professor of Creative Writing for the MFA program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, as well as a contributing editor for the Alaska Quarterly Review.