THE YOUNG MEN ALONG THE BAR ARE TOO TIRED EVEN TO DIE

We wear our work below our eyes.
How can someone so young be so tired?
my mother asks on voicemail, again.
But I am too tired to call back, too
tired to explain, too tired, even,
to walk home and close my eyes.
When’s the last time the sun rose?
I don’t remember. The only light
I know now is electric and hideous.
The ring on the bartop from my glass
is incomplete, broken like the moon
in the sky that could be in any season,
if I could bring myself to look up.

—

Ariel Francisco is a first generation American poet of Dominican and Guatemalan descent. He is currently completing his MFA at Florida International University where he is the editor-in-chief of Gulf Stream Literary Magazine and also the winner of an Academy of American Poets Prize. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Tupelo Quarterly, Washington Square, and elsewhere, and his chapbook “Before Snowfall, After Rain” is forthcoming from Glass Poetry Press. He lives in Miami, FL.