"A Bar Called Nostalgia On Route 22" by Robert Krut

A Bar Called Nostalgia On Route 22

Your hometown, like a photo negative
on top of a photo negative.

Standing outside the bar in the parking lot
of a strip mall, light a cigarette,
imagine it will taste like pine and winter air,
and instead, it just tastes like a cigarette.

Two old high-school friends make out furiously
against the alley’s back wall
while their respective families
sleep at home to the light of bedside laptops.

There is a temptation to treat
this whole town like a grave,
and the one woman dancing to
a local cover band inside, its angel.

And that might make you tough, imagine
you are steel through brick,
but you are here, of course,
pulled by the gravity of habit and history.

The cigarette is done, and it wasn’t even good.
The tree across the state road is a cell phone tower
disguised as an evergreen. Everyone is back inside
and the bass a muffled heartbeat through the walls.

Your hometown, a secret tattooed on your back,
never to be seen as you walk forward,
each step based on what you think
it says, and what you know it doesn’t.

Robert Krut

Robert Krut is the author of three books: The Now Dark Sky, Setting Us All on Fire (SUNY/Codhill Press, 2019), which received the Codhill Poetry Award; This Is the Ocean (Bona Fide Books, 2013), which was awarded the Lanitis Poetry Prize; and The Spider Sermons (BlazeVox, 2009). His work has appeared in numerous journals, including Gulf Coast, Blackbird, Passages North, and many more. Additional information can be found at https://www.robert-krut.com/ and https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robert-krut. 

Headshot: Robert Krut

Photo Credit: Staff