When I’ve Run out of Coffee
and/or First-Person Plural

Andie Francis

To stay awake, I pretend I am
wearing lace under my pajamas. If
eyes can undress the night sky, then
the bedroom light has burned out.
My neighbors push a mattress
wrapped in plastic through their
front door and down the hall. I let
myself make their new bed in the
dark. When I get to the fourth
corner, I remember Woody Guthrie,
how he said his eyes were cameras,
and then I realize another person
inhabits my lover’s basement. My
lover thinks you forget how good a
song is until your lover sings it to
you. Might he come around now and
use the right kind of pronoun and
find me here, wearing lingerie on the
porch?

Andie Francis is the author of the chapbook I Am Trying to Show You My Matchbook Collection (CutBank Books, 2015). She holds an MFA in poetry from The University of Arizona and is an assistant poetry editor for DIAGRAM. Her work appears in Berkeley Poetry Review, Cimarron Review, Columbia Poetry Review, CutBank, Greensboro Review, Portland Review, Timber Journal, Willow Springs, and elsewhere.