More to the left, he says, then leans to watch
the dangling claw from a better angle
as I guide the stubby joystick, grease-slick
from unwashed hands—just two coin-fed alley kids
fishing for a way to pass the time. Behind the screen,
the glass-eyed, cheap stuffed animals, cotton-cored,
plead with us for escape. We tune out the rumble-crash
of our parents’ Tuesday night league, the shouted fucks
when they bowl poorly, and the shouted fucks
when they bowl well, wafting Marlboro plumes braiding
midair with the steam from vending machine coffee,
generations of beer staining the ash-strewn carpet
a thousand shades of brown. And his eyes, all blue
and lit up like pinball bulbs, are watching intently
as the claw drops for the rainbow bear, its clumsy seams
misstitched and already unraveling.
This could be any night in midsummer
in middle-of-nowhere America
in the mid-nineties—except it’s the one
when I decide to tell him how pretty
those eyes are, as I dangle the hard-won
bear by one misshapen foot, an offering
I am destined to find later in the men’s room sink,
ripped into pieces, scattered like pins, fuck you
faggot Sharpied on its face. And this, I have learned, this
is how the heart operates—just when we think we’ve got
a grip on something, the claw seems rigged to let it go.