Valentine’s Day night

the poetry class half empty

and the ones who are there

chagrined they are,

sussing out all the other

losers, the one who wrote

about pissing drunk with his eyes

closed and for once being fully

in the moment, and yet, or the one

playing russian roulette with

her ex and that slut

                                   All of them

mumbling halfhearted null-

critique null-praise null-question,

something thrumming like hunger

except in their solar plexuses,

thinking maybe the one hot

woman or the one hot guy

(themselves confused they

are there) would somehow see

through to them, beneath all

the surface bravura shit/fear

they all recognize and forgive

in one another, see through all that

to their beauty written

down forever in poems or

That they themselves would see this

underneath the squared-off face

and helpless pauses of someone

they’d ignored, and they are no longer

thinking about the work and they

are looking to me for help and

I mumble something about