David Kirby

I’m pretty sure you’re crazy about me

but how would I know

when I asked you if you wanted to get married

you said sure

on two conditions which were

that I couldn’t suddenly go all ape-shit Christian on you

and that I couldn’t suddenly decide I was gay

and didn’t like women

I was okay with that

I hadn’t been to church in years and I’ve always been straight

why change now

but have you ever seen that Richard Pryor sketch

where it’s July

and a guy wakes up and glares at his sleeping wife

and starts punching her shoulder

and says

what was that shit you were saying last February

now I wonder what I’ve gotten myself into

my friend Jon was away at college

and his girlfriend Sandy was supposed to come up for homecoming

but they had a big fight

and she said she wasn’t coming

so on the day of the game Jon and his roommate

made margaritas and got stinking drunk

Jon didn’t know that Sandy had changed her mind

and taken the train and then a taxi to his dorm

which had these french windows that looked out on the street

so Jon looks out and sees Sandy stumping up the sidewalk

and shouts Sandy

and falls through one of the french windows

and there’s Sandy with her suitcase in her hand

looking at Jon with a blender full of margaritas in his

lying in a flower bed unconscious

then Jon comes around

what the hell

they married anyway

David Kirby’s latest books are a poetry collection, Help Me, Information, and a textbook modestly entitled The Knowledge: Where Poems Come From and How to Write Them. Kirby is also the author of Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll, which the Times Literary Supplement described as “a hymn of praise to the emancipatory power of nonsense.” He is currently on the editorial board of Alice James Books.