If You’re Tired Then Go Take a Nap by Adrian Matejka

If You’re Tired Then Go Take a Nap

 

I never liked bridges or cops & there

are more of both of them in the suburbs,

lording over possibilities like stumbles

 

do stairs. Down the blue & white set next

to the small gym after first period, shoelace

caught under a new bully’s foot. He would

 

have gotten stole on in Carriage House, but

not by me. Gots to chill or it’ll get worse:

in blue Jams & pushed off summer’s slick

 

ledge, long fall into the private pool broken

into three distinct verses: the flail & giggling

girls, the sun-stroked lifeguard’s exclamation,

 

& the red-handed water’s backslap rising up,

splitting into two, more chlorinated skies.