I walk into the Bar Nirvana
because those are the joke rules
and my legs are tired
and my eyes are tired. This part of the story doesn’t matter.
I ask the Japanese bartender
which is the cheapest beer
and she gives me Sapporo,
which I guess is the piss beer
of Japan.
She looks at my ID for a while
because I look younger than I am
and have, since I failed to grow a beard
at sixteen. The man seated next to me
tells her ’92 makes me 23.
24 next month I tell him. You must feel real old he says.
Not really I tell him. I take out my wallet.

There are five faces in there.
Four are the same.
I take the four same faces out
and hand them to her.
Abraham gets folded in half and goes back away.

This isn’t something I do often. Sometimes with dad, who drinks me under the table.
That doesn’t make this important though.


Bartender face across the bar is thin now
but the way she looks at me so earnest-eyed
behind the transactionary smile
means she’s been a mother:
gained thirty pounds at some point
had morning nausea
and craved raw pepper corns.

I feel young now. I don’t feel real old.

She takes the four faces and puts them
in the register.
In go the greedy little eyes and the white wig hair,
the stoic three-quarter turn,
the white skin inked
in dulled green.
Four times
in goes the face

the one that becomes a mushroom
if you fold it just so.

We say before we fold: George Washington
We fold and say: mushroom.

There’s a tv in the bar playing a college basketball game.
Oklahoma-Kansas. Three overtimes.
Best game of the season they’ll say.
I look toward the points of colored light
flitting over the flat rectangle on the wall
but what I see
is the sweat
coming hot
down the faces
of the boys, and I see
the faces
of the boys.
Phone rings in my pocket
and I think without realizing I’m thinking
“it’s you”