NO SONGS / FIREFLY
By Sam Pink

NO SONGS

She slides her phone
across the bar.
Says she has some credits
put on a song I want to hear.
I tell her
there are no songs
I want to hear.
There’s a stinkbug
stuck in the bar mat
where I set glasses to dry.
I usher the stinkbug
onto a napkin
and set it on the bartop.
This poem
is about peace.

FIREFLY

I get home from work tonight at 3am. Sit in my chair in the dark. Exhausted. There’s a small flash on the ceiling. At first I think it’s a random headlight from outside. But then I see it again. It’s a firefly hovering by the ceiling. It flashes once more. Normally, I’d make sure it got back outside. But not tonight, friend. No. Tonight, you’re in here with me. I watch it flash a few more times. I turn and look out my window across the train tracks across town past the library and into the distance at the point I believe represents the further point I can be looking, not counting the sky.