The Twang (for Andrew and Mandy)
by Corey Green

If you're not in the chair next to me
talking about Waylon Jennings,
you're in the kitchen,
mixing the drink
he gave Lucinda
when they got drunk
in a bar outside Tuscaloosa,

and wrote some pitiful song
about love and highways
and guitars, the same old shit
that makes you
okay with being
right here, right now.

And the pain is what that means,
the part you left with a gypsy
on the side of the road in Alabama.

Sometimes in these chairs, we talk
about the song like a highway
or a guitar, the same old shit,
and sometimes you sing it to me
with a smile a gypsy gave you outside Tuscaloosa.