The Hangover

The sun is a stoplight, precluding

The livid room above the drugstore.

Isolated unit, so a set of steep stairs

To it where friends sleep on the floor

After a night out feels like dying.

No, I’m fine. I’d like black tea, please.

Turn the kettle on, come watch, see

What you said last night in argument

Wouldn’t apply. I’m not fighting you.

We go over the same ground. One

Person searching another before

Time enough to find what is down

There; basement of the mind.

Turn the T.V. on. I am a person.

Surely the dogs barking and the early

Breeze could snap you from sleep

But you were so closed off, I took

A leak without you looking. It’s not

Fair you can enter the deep like that.

Sitting by the fireplace, witnessing

What space comes to mind in the morning.

Why can’t we do without it like in dreaming?

Jasper Glen is a poet from Vancouver, BC. His poems appear or are forthcoming in mignolo arts, The Ekphrastic Review, The Antonym, and Island Writer Magazine.