View Cover
No, I will never be as cool as the guy from Les Deuxluxes,
even if I buy him shots and quote his covers,
even if he says to me, “Look, man, all you need is a good friperie.”
Will you never love me, Anna Frances Meyer?
But moustaches always made me think of arcade perverts
and my neighbours in Verdun.
After Nirvana played the Verdun Auditorium,
they found Courtney at Bar Côte St-Paul by the Cash’N’Loan.
When Jack White saved the Jack White Auditorium,
was it more Massey than Tony Wilson?
If she skips another shower, will the bartender at La Rockette
smell more like Durutti than raclette?
The guy from the band says that I should go.
But I won’t go. Not until I meet Anna Frances Meyer.
Not until last call lights up the walls
and she finds me in the bathroom stall writing,
“You just can’t run, you just can’t run from the funnel of love.”
The last place I went was Ultramar.
I walked my friends there and said,
“You can hail a cab at Ultramar,”
the Ultramar where I bought ketchup chips
and Coffee Crisps and one time even Ringolos.
Only the night attendant knew my love of Swedish Berries
and plastic-wrapped smoked meats.
Only the night attendant who blasted Appetite for Destruction
knew my sweetheart’s craze
for M&M’s and Pez dispensers.
I bid my friends adieu at Ultramar.
They claimed Verdun was the middle of nowhere.
It’s only the edge, I said to them.
Nowhere is somewhere west, out past the neon
5e Avenue on the New Verdun Diner.
My friends scrambled into taxis
shooting northward and eastward.
I bought a coffee at Ultramar.
I caught the night attendant air-guitaring.
I had to move by twelve o’clock.