Kurt Luchs – Innisfree Poetry Journal

Beginning Near the End

The waitress could spot a first date
that was going well, they can always tell.
I finished your salad. You finished my sentences.
We both got tipsy, but not with wine.
Incipient joy can have a similar effect
and can also make you descend the stairs
unsteadily, the same way the sun was going down,
one hand on a bannister of clouds.
Back at your house your rescue dog got out
and had to be rescued all over again,
a furry parable from a parallel universe
that was not lost on me.
Our hands found each other, then our mouths,
and the conversation continued,
even better without words.
On the long drive home my heart raced.

Kurt Luchs (kurtluchs.com) has poems published in Plume Poetry Journal, The Bitter Oleander, and London Grip. He won the 2022 Pushcart Prize, as well as the 2019 Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest. He has written humor for the New Yorker, the Onion and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. His books include a humor collection, It’s Funny Until Someone Loses an Eye (Then It’s Really Funny), and a poetry chapbook, One of These Things Is Not Like the Other. His first full-length poetry collection, Falling in the Direction of Up, was recently issued by Sagging Meniscus Press. He lives in Portage, Michigan.

Beginning Near the End

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