Tonight's Poet Corner: Nonchalance & Nicotine
Nonchalance & Nicotine by Belinda Roddie Sam chooses Saturdays for when we share smokes and pretend not to give a fuck about anything, from science to the world ending. She says if we think too hard, we could grill our own brains, holding them like limp steaks to hot iron grids, searing memories we don't want into our raw psyches. I gave up cigarettes ten years ago, so I drink while the others inhale the ashes of the city. I got the inclination for booze in my belly from my father, who got it from his mother, who got it from her Depression-era aunt who fought against Prohibition like a bandit, just so she could get happy off of something better than a tub of homemade gin. The eyes of steel golems are open and expose scurrying ghosts behind office windows, fragile fingers scuttling across plastic keyboards. Carbon mingling with silicon. Sam tells a joke. Everyone laughs. I smell the tobacco in their dry mouths. Someone blurts something about somet