Poem for Pavement’s Brighten The Corners

There was this guy a few years back. The Reagan years, late second term.
It was a big kegger, and he was our host, one super-serious dude, en route
To some grad school the next year. Me and my friends ended up so stoned
In his room. We listened to him dominate the stereo and pontificate about rock bands,
How they all get worse after their first albums. “All downhill after that.” His rock critic vigor
Left me dazed. I wanted to disagree, but you can’t discuss things with these people.
Just then my friend, a quiet drummer, spoke up, offering offer an example. “Like, The Beatles?”
We laughed at this, our host’s humiliation, and unpeeled ourselves from his futon.
I remembered all of this reading late Wallace Stevens, when he’s lucid
And you can understand what the man is saying. I was sitting at an overrated cafe.
Something about the table talk. They were all so serious . . .


Daniel M. Nester
Brooklyn, NY