In Heaven There Is No Last Call by Paul Corman-Roberts

Everybody wants to go on tour with Orpheus

but only three lottery winners get chosen

& to be honest, it’s slave labor

all the way up to the beheading

still, it’s incredible 

what people are willing

to put themselves through

for open-source exposure:

if you don’t bond with someone on your road trip

you must prepare to drift from them forever more

last night’s footnotes kicked down the ditch 

never to be found in the light 

of mourning

of coping/processing/fixing/maintaining/ 

of leap back eye fucks

the grinder/the maker/the faucet/the car/

the life/no list in sight

the phone rings.

the tour is over 

everyone quietly asks

for the cash out line

but refuse to say

where they think it might be.

Paul Corman-Roberts is the author of the full-length poetry collection Bone Moon Palace from Nomadic Press (2021.) An original founder and organizer of the Beast Crawl Literary Festival he currently teaches for the Oakland Unified School District