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