Cul-de-sac By Caleb Bouchard

It’s 10:59 

on a Friday night

and I’m standing outside in the dark 

waiting for the dog to piss. 

My son and girlfriend 

are asleep

and I’m three beers deep 

composing half-assed 

haikus 

about the moon

when a subtle electric whirring 

comes from up the hill. 

It’s the house 

that had the high school 

graduation sign in the front 

yard back in May. 

Now the recent grad  

and her friends 

are making the most 

of their newly acquired adulthood, 

zooming off in a Tesla.

I imagine them going to 

a punk show 

or a bar downtown

or an unhinged house party 

or just over to the liquor store 

then to the QT 

and dumping vodka 

into slushies 

and chasing each other 

around a tennis court. 

I did these things years 

ago, but now I’m 32, an unshaven 

homebody, 

twenty pounds overweight and 

perpetually 

in desperate need of a nap. 

Despite what 

they say, 

there’s poetry 

to be experienced 

in these cloistered suburbs. 

I hope they find it

and create more poetry, 

righteous and rebellious

just like them.  

As they turn the corner 

hugging the edge of the cul-de-sac

their headlights 

just barely 

miss me. 

Caleb Bouchard is the author of 79 Nonets, The Satirist: Prose Poems, and most recently The Downside Up Year: A New Dad's Diary. His poetry has recently appeared in The Chiron Review, Hanging Loose, Splat, and other journals.