Ode to Old Friends in the Corner Booth at Applebee’s

Jesse Gabriel González

But specifically, to the darkness slouched

between the table top and the tops

of our thighs—black denim, blue

denim, bare—bouncing

our knuckles like pinball bumpers,

like booster rockets struggling to

launch a dozen satellites at once.

Also: to the tilt of it all,

the way we always sank towards

the center and tangled our orbits on

purpose. To onion-ring-around-

the-rosy; to our mozzarella-stick-and

poke-tattoos. With thumbprints like

pinpricks, we mapped a galaxy

of grease across our hands,

arms, cheeks, thinking

each of us was a star searching

for the one life-sustaining planet

we were allotted. We flew headlong

on a beautifully doomed mission

to love each other only in pairs.

Somehow, we could sense the universe

expanding outside, but not the sticky,

red-vinyl gravity of those nights

buckling our asteroid belt together.

My friends, we spent so much time

staring into each other’s skies—

forget the constellations

we thought we could form,

and look at what we found:

a place of pure velocity,

where we could feel—

if only for a moment

as we spun in the dark

between the stars—

motionless.

Jesse Gabriel González es un poeta del gran estado de New Jersey. Posee una Maestría en Bellas Artes de la Universidad de Oregon y un Grado en Artes de la Universidad de Cornell. Fue el ganador de un Premio al Contribuidor de Bread Loaf y de una beca universitaria de Anaphora Arts. Su poesía ha aparecido en The Seventh Wave y Decolonial Passage. Es un asistente editorial de Poetry Northwest.

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