All Good, No Worries!

by Julián Martinez


Darling, if I say the CTA fucked me 
& now I’m late
, it’s because the circuits 
that power the tracks & turnstiles 
(& ticked-off attendants in their glass 
-metal boxes) are dying from sole-heavied 
decades of rust & gum & bust & won’t 
get replaced until grass swallows this city 
’s ashes — that, too, is a plea for tenderness 
in a country of wire-fried decline. I’m late 

& we’re so early in our hand-holding 
that we’ve yet to rabidly say I’m sorry, 
though we say it every day after 
a phlegmy cough that brushes the other 
’s chin in the shower, or the awkward 
cigarette pass as you switch lanes 
going a hundred on the morning e-way, 
& now, in the stopped train car, as I stare 
at a pulsating text bubble that means 
you, too, stare at bubbles on your walk 
to the parking lot. I think of the attendant 

& how this tardiness is not their fault, despite 
the Hawaiin shirt, depressed in luggage, 
shouting that it is. Don’t you hope there’s doorways 
holding the warmth of arms for both of them? 
Well, we know where we’re goin’ but we don’t 
know where we’ve been,
goes the song 
we screamed on the drive home yesterday, 
& we’re not goin’ nowhere specific today, 
just downtown to make out at red lights 
with one of my eyes open, to tell you when 
to go, but the eye always pulls to a close & towards 
you– you say I’m your favorite Picasso– 

you love Lisa Frank &, fuck it, I’d rather Chicago 
have a blue plush tiger than that statue 
in Daley Plaza (with a waterslide & sign that says
“Radical Acceptance Goes Hard”), but you have it tattooed 
on your left thigh, so I do dream 
of it standing upright after the coming doomsday 
floods. ‘Cause you wanted it to live on you 
forever. I might just insist we park 
right by it & sit there until the sky falls 
so that maybe, it will. Live on you, I mean. 
On both of us. & for that, 
I can’t ever be sorry. 

We’re moving now!


Julián Martinez (he/him) is the son of Mexican and Cuban immigrants and is from Waukegan, IL. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming in HAD, Peach Mag, Barrio Panther and elsewhere. His work has received The Society of Professional Journalists’ Mark of Excellence and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Find him online @martinezfjulian