Jim Simmerman

JITTERY

Nancy takes me to a coffee shop called “Jitters”

which is, I’m thinking, like naming a bar “Drunk”:

what you get when you get too much of what it is

they’ve got to give you—though that’s just me

of course, going off. I’m feeling kind of drunk

on talk and too much coffee and Nancy’s laughing

easy like she maybe thinks: okay. Me, I mean,

though I’m reading into things of course—

talk, laughter—speed-reading into things

what with all the coffee and little sleep

I’m running on of late. Things, their course,

have not been great, though I’m feeling not

unhappy to be alive and not asleep and here

with Nancy blabbing out my life like some black

and white Karl Malden movie tough guy grateful

to finally confess and yes I’ll obsess on

splitting that infinitive since Nancy knows

syntax (“syn-, together + tassein, to arrange”);

Nancy knows yoga, Neruda, and dogs and yes

to the body’s thoughtless crush on the world and

her smile flies open like a sun-flushed dove

and right, I know I talk too much and think

too much about what I’m thinking and not

enough about what I say, and simmer too long

in the crock of myself, which is right where I

get when I get this way and want to say

shut up, Simmerman, just shut up . . . .

Nancy takes me to a coffee shop.