come to where the flavor is. Eric Turner

you’re standing underneath the night and you’re pat-patting a pack of cigarettes against the palm of your left hand because it’s a fresh pack and you peel off the packaging and you ignore the warning and you’re leaning against the brick of a dive bar or a nightclub or something. chatter harmony like crickets out here. and you’re leaning and you’re not saying much, you’re pat-patting cigarettes but you aren’t going to smoke them, not yet, you’re going to hand them out.

bri is smoking one of your cigarettes and the cigarette is linoleum tile cracking beneath her head, it tastes like her mom screaming and crying and yelling and crying. you’re handing her the cigarette and she’s smoking the cigarette but she has her own cigarettes and she’s smoking one of hers, too. but you’re handing amanda a cigarette and amanda is burning the cigarette and she isn’t inhaling it much but she is inhaling the cigarette and you’re handing it to her as she’s smoking it and she’s talking to her next boyfriend and he only smokes when he’s drunk and he loves the cigarette and you’re handing it to her and he doesn’t like the way that she smokes.

you’re handing cigarettes to mike and dave and chris and they’re always a threesome, they’re always together, and they fumble the cigarettes into their beer drunk mouths, behind their beer drunk masks, and their breath is like liquor and who knows which came first and they call it a ciggy and they call it a drunk ciggy and you’re handing them all cigarettes and none of them are thinking about the fact that it’s the same brand that their dad smoked, they’re tasting what he tasted when he wasn’t around.

jon asks for a cigarette, he’s needing a cigarette, he can’t afford a cigarette because a cigarette is like the sky on that day back in august but it’s all inside of your lungs and you and jon are standing under the night and you’re wondering if you can hand jon a cigarette because he can’t afford one and you’re handing jon a cigarette and he’s telling you not to blame yourself, don’t blame yourself he says as he’s finishing the cigarette, as it all happens in one breath. matty asks for a fag and so you hand him a cigarette but maybe that wasn’t what he was asking for but he’s smoking the cigarette you’re handing him and he’s so full of pride for the way that it burns, how he blows rings from the burning fag, it’s burning and you’re handing it to him and you’re trying not to blame yourself. matty, like amanda, tells you he loves you and you hand him a cigarette.

there are twenty cigarettes but you’re handing them all out so you have infinite cigarettes so you give a cigarette to a rat and the rat thanks you for the cigarettes by chittering, which is almost chattering, and his chitters sound like a complaint about john clare who tried to write about the grotesqueness of nature and so he wrote about mice but the rat is saying can you hand him a cigarette because people might like mice but no one likes a rat, a rat can never get a lighter but he always has a cigarette so you’re handing him a cigarette even though he already has some because that’s the only way you know how to say what you’re feeling and besides you have infinite cigarettes and you aren’t smoking them, not yet.

izzy and justin are on a first date and you’re handing them cigarettes because it isn’t going well because izzy has been checking her phone every time justin is talking about himself too long and justin thinks izzy is on her phone too much and they’re accepting the cigarette because it’s always like this and their parents used to smoke before they started dating.

you’re handing richard a cigarette and you’re asking if your poem is good and he’s lying to you. jay is lying to you to because his name isn’t even jay and he’s only taking your cigarette because he wants it to be his cigarette and a cigarette gives him a place to be for the moment and he’s lying the opposite way because he admires you so much and he’s so thankful for the cigarette that you’re giving him.

anyway, you have an infinite possible number of cigarettes between 1 and 8 and you’re determined to hand out as many as you can so you’re handing a cigarette to everyone around you and i guess that you’ll smoke whatever’s leftover and like it.