—the way you show up at the end of another shitty week
with your pills and purple hair, dragging around
your “brooding and powerfully atmospheric” aura,
your jubilant delinquency—

you’re so Siouxsie and the Banshees.
You’d eat your own children.
Saturday, you bring out the werewolf in me.

Saturday, I’m in love

with your “Unicorn Blood” lipstick, fake id,
with your piercings and thigh-high boots,
your hairy armpits and raucous desperation.
You’re The Boondock Saints to my Citizen Kane,
the Chalupa Supreme to my Coq au vin.

Saturday, don’t even suggest I’m to blame.
I’ve seen you breezing through the yard, swigging Colt 45.
Saturday, there are limits.

Saturday, in your studded leather,
driving your vintage black 1968 Dodge Charger…

Saturday, the point is…

Saturday, I love you like plump loves spandex.
I love waking up next to you in Bangor, Pennsylvania.
I love your sirens and your anti-fascism—
and I mean that more than Karen Carpenter,
but less than Joey Ramone—
three or four more of you has always been my dream.
Thanks for letting me drive.

Saturday, I think I’m drowning.
I’m forty-nine, and I have no chosen course.
Saturday, that tickles.
Saturday, will you please turn off Sunday’s cartoons?

Listen, Saturday, you’ve done me wrong—
you’ve taken me from sober to stupid

with no round trip.

Michael Steffen’s fourth poetry collection, Blood Narrative, was recently published by Main Street Rag Press. New work has appeared in Chiron Review, Constellations and The Comstock Review. Michael is a graduate of the MFA writing program at Vermont College and currently lives in Buffalo, NY.