Coolest Dumbass
at the Strip Club
—
Patrick Holian
my son was born in a hospital on a hill,
and as he shrieked in my arms, I took
him to the window to show him how
much of San Francisco had once burned.
Spanish moss hung from the heron’s nest,
veiled the flagstone bark of the tree. teach
a man to hunt, teach a man to water his dead,
teach a man to 401-k, teach a man to customs
of sadness. the grass is always just, transcendent
merchants of second-hand marsh twilight
and irredeemable gamblers. you waded through
life pretending to love me, which you claim made
it true, and for that I thank and forgive you. when
my grandmother’s mind began to drift, she started
to poison herself at sunrise and cure herself at sunset,
so when the evening finally arrived that she forgot
her antidote, it was time for rest. I used to drag a pink
ribbon down my love’s spine, fix it tightly around
my neck, then request humbly that they decimate me.
the pagination of crows in their milky blue sky festooned
with clouds, the pagination of deaths in my 40s
and 50s, brightly now, said the river to the meat.
haven’t you died briefly and luxuriously in a commercial
vehicle on the side of the highway with someone who
didn’t know your middle name or your last name or
your vocation? behind the delirium, a rift, each coffin
was once the newest coffin in the known universe,
even if only for a fraction of a fraction of a second.
throttled elegance in abeyance of the dissolution of
empire, put potato chips in the freezer, fucked during
halftime and late in the third quarter, thoroughly
and earnestly and in a way that was constructed for
mutual pleasure, so the team would maybe triumph.
they don’t make sky like they used to, they don’t make
like they used to, they don’t sky, they don’t use, they
don’t. lay waste to January, the wind that was once
reprieve now acts as scythe, the dazzling lights
and the thrum of song in my torso—ribs
and muscle and fat and blood and heart
and whatever else—were the maw of the
mountain tunnel the train must travel through
that I had once dreamed of, time suckling on
collapse and dj booths and scuffed floors
of locker rooms, stages, and champagne rooms.
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Patrick Holian (he/him/his) is a Mexican American writer from San Francisco, California. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Saint Mary’s College of California and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Georgia Review, Black Warrior Review, Kenyon Review, The Cincinnati Review, Barrelhouse, Bennington Review, The Acentos Review, Yalobusha Review, and elsewhere. He was a 2019 Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s fiction finalist, a finalist for Michigan Quarterly Review’s 2021 Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize, a 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee, and he received a 2025 Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts.
and as he shrieked in my arms, I took
him to the window to show him how
much of San Francisco had once burned.
Spanish moss hung from the heron’s nest,
veiled the flagstone bark of the tree. teach
a man to hunt, teach a man to water his dead,
teach a man to 401-k, teach a man to customs
of sadness. the grass is always just, transcendent
merchants of second-hand marsh twilight
and irredeemable gamblers. you waded through
life pretending to love me, which you claim made
it true, and for that I thank and forgive you. when
my grandmother’s mind began to drift, she started
to poison herself at sunrise and cure herself at sunset,
so when the evening finally arrived that she forgot
her antidote, it was time for rest. I used to drag a pink
ribbon down my love’s spine, fix it tightly around
my neck, then request humbly that they decimate me.
the pagination of crows in their milky blue sky festooned
with clouds, the pagination of deaths in my 40s
and 50s, brightly now, said the river to the meat.
haven’t you died briefly and luxuriously in a commercial
vehicle on the side of the highway with someone who
didn’t know your middle name or your last name or
your vocation? behind the delirium, a rift, each coffin
was once the newest coffin in the known universe,
even if only for a fraction of a fraction of a second.
throttled elegance in abeyance of the dissolution of
empire, put potato chips in the freezer, fucked during
halftime and late in the third quarter, thoroughly
and earnestly and in a way that was constructed for
mutual pleasure, so the team would maybe triumph.
they don’t make sky like they used to, they don’t make
like they used to, they don’t sky, they don’t use, they
don’t. lay waste to January, the wind that was once
reprieve now acts as scythe, the dazzling lights
and the thrum of song in my torso—ribs
and muscle and fat and blood and heart
and whatever else—were the maw of the
mountain tunnel the train must travel through
that I had once dreamed of, time suckling on
collapse and dj booths and scuffed floors
of locker rooms, stages, and champagne rooms.
Patrick Holian (he/him/his) is a Mexican American writer from San Francisco, California. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Saint Mary’s College of California and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Georgia Review, Black Warrior Review, Kenyon Review, The Cincinnati Review, Barrelhouse, Bennington Review, The Acentos Review, Yalobusha Review, and elsewhere. He was a 2019 Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s fiction finalist, a finalist for Michigan Quarterly Review’s 2021 Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize, a 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee, and he received a 2025 Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts.