Matt McGee

Nag

The line Travis can’t forget tonight

is the one his so-called best, oldest friends 

claim to have once seen his baby mama snort 

off a bartender’s dick, or so goes the story better left 

in everyone’s past, like his night beneath the purple and 

blue and green lasers of a Valley strip club in 2017 

the implants used to snort two rails in an attempt 

to forget the new relationship and the baby 

who hadn’t yet bound them forever. 

Flight Path

If you sit in the parking lot late at night, 

after the last exhausted and unpaid souls 

that keep a community theatre boiling 

have finally slogged home,

and you stare into the starlit sky,

you'll see the building is directly 

beneath the southern flight path

leading into LAX.

And you might get the feeling 

someone out there

still needs a guiding light.

On the Lamb

Rolling Ventura Boulevard

dog in the backseat

a fugitive who’s never given anyone

a day of trouble.

Walker in the trunk

his best friend not returning calls

an indifferent family, loyal

only to the game of sarcasm.

The day after she’s led away

he wakes to sunlight, thinking:

today is the first day

of the end of your life.

Point A to B

Most journeys are rarely a straight line

as simple as going from Point A to B -

just ask any waitress with a Fitbit.

Shannon said “I got fourteen hundred

steps in today, all from walking around

this place over and over and over. Says 

here I burned off thirteen hundred calories

just in the last five hours, but that’s not counting

the chicken fingers and basket of fries I put away.”