The Haunted Starbucks

It’s a coffeehouse – that’s all, but not quite,

there’s something crooked in its angles,

that slanted floor, the ceiling that scrapes my head

one moment, is higher than sky the next.



Tables rub up against tables, elbows nudge elbows,

air is thick with fumes not of Brazil, not Kona,

not Istanbul – but scorched, bitter, like cobwebs

woven inside the nasal passages.



The entertainment is never entertaining.

Sometimes, it’s a man with a guitar,

no face, and a grunt for a voice,

Or it’s the woman, her folder creaking open like a coffin.

She reads, he plays, and we listen - not just with ears,

but with hands that twitch, feet that ache to flee.



When he’s done, the air does not clear. It thickens.

Murmurs climb the walls, voices not of the living.

When she stops, a few buy her chapbook. Eyes hollow,

with the smile of an eel, she signs her name in blood.



Come midnight, the coffeehouse closes. Or so it says.

The door is locked behind me. But also in front of me.