The Flaneur's Pharmakon

by Thom Sullivan

Jamie Wyeth, Andy Warhol, 1976

And the poem writes itself, or the café writes
the poem, or the café is the poem? A clamouring
of voices over voices. A hello! that’s tossed
across the shopping mall like a bouquet wanting
for a bridesmaid [^to catch it]. There’s always
a more desirable self on offer, meaning
downlights, & a pair of replica Barcelona chairs,

& an ornamental disregard for plainness
over eloquence. I neither disagree nor strongly
disagree nor am I neutral on this point,
which is to say: a cockatoo winging over the suburb
at 3 a.m., a balled-up heart of blood & feather,
screeching. I’m editing my life down
from a longer story, with its subtle motifs

about Forgiveness, or lack thereof: 1 part contrition,
to 1 part confession, to 1 part absolution, &
a pinch of salt. Love in the time of antidepressants,
you might contend, or love as the brief euphoria
of nangs? The native frangipanis deploy
their soft caltrops along the footpaths of Melbourne
St., North Adelaide, & in the post-Mass

vespertine, I walk half-a-dozen blocks westward,
& a block or two southward, till I’m standing
out front of Stella Bowen’s dreamhouse, reading
from a plaque. Each day my parents grow older,
their days weighted more heavily than mine –
though that, too, is a fiction. I count the years
ahead (notional) like bitter, exquisite pills.

There’re days I sleep so late there’s only time
for one square meal, & an hour in a new café.
Powerlines. Bat silhouettes. A liquid sunset.

This poem appears in Volume III of Agony.