Dorm Room Magic

If you’re attending college

it’s nothing to have ten or even thirty

candles in your dorm room

      burning all at once

      with some incense,

      acrid week-old coffee, cigarette smoke,

      and a little touch of unspecified college music

getting stoned.

Wax flows down cheap wine bottle —

            Chimes.

      You can purchase them

      in any number of stores

                  or you can make them in tin cans,

                  but they always turn out really crappy.

Since college, however, I haven’t scorched

      a single candle,

      not even on romantic occasions;

            and, in fact, I’m kind of embarrassed

      at the fashion with which I burnt them in college,

      like I was listening to Phish and the Dead in the wrong way

      when I was actually just a cheesy asshole like everybody else.

 


by francis raven


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