Last Sale of the Season
The sign in the window says “last sale of the season”
but that sign is in the window all the time,
and my rational mind says it’s a lie, my critical mind
says it’s a con, come-on, deceit, deception,
but my better mind says it’s true, my better mind
says it’s always true, each and every time,
it’s always the last sale of the season, always
the threshold of nostalgia, just past where we wanted to be
by this time, having done all this, it’s always the last sale
last love, last kiss, last chance, my better mind says it’s true,
my better mind says hold me, kiss me, love me,
my better mind says I love you, my better mind says yes,
this is our last chance, but no, it is never too late,
and my better mind doesn’t care
if this is a contradiction, my better mind doesn’t care
if this is irrational, leave that to my rational mind,
critical mind, my better mind says
I love you a love you are worthy of being loved,
my better mind says fuck the booze fuck the drugs
fuck this disease and that disease and that disease,
my better mind says fuck the blood the broken teeth the broken spirit,
my better mind says do your worst, it’s what you’re best at,
it’s what your good at, it’s your gift,
it’s God’s give to you and your gift to me,
my better mind says love me, my better mind says love.
By Michael Broder
Biography:
Michael Broder is the author of Drug and Disease Free (Indolent Books, 2016) and This Life Now (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2014), a finalist for the 2015 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Assaracus, BLOOM, Columbia Poetry Review, Court Green, OCHO, Painted Bride Quarterly, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies This New Breed: Gents, Bad Boys and Barbarians 2 (Windstorm Creative, 2004), My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them (Terrace Books, 2009), Spaces Between Us: Poetry, Prose and Art on HIV/AIDS (Third World Press, 2010), Divining Divas: 50 Gay Men on Their Muses (Lethe Press, 2012), and Multilingual Anthology: The Americas Poetry Festival of New York 2015 (Artepoética Press, 2015). He is the founding director of The HIV Here & Now Project and the founding publisher of Indolent Books. He lives in Brooklyn with his husband, the poet Jason Schneiderman, and a backyard colony of stray and feral cats.