Coffee Shop Girl by Christopher Linforth

She looks over my poem and tells me to replace slugabed

with a word the common people will understand. I can’t tell her

it’s part of my style—she knows I’m all surface, that I carry

a DVD about a Michael Jackson impersonator in my messenger

bag, that I pretend not to wear deodorant, or even care about

my two-week beard. The poem has no heart, she says. I know

she’s being truthful. This critique isn’t about the girl I slept with,

her friend visiting from Santa Fe, or how she kicked me out

of her apartment for smelling her arm hair. She reads poetry

every night; she cares about white space and when to break

a line. I can learn from her—I know that—even when she hands

the poem back, the title replaced with Americano.

Christopher Linforth has recently published work in Epiphany, Gargoyle, Hotel Amerika, and other literary magazines.