Night Lights

By Jenny Chu

The weather forces return

to the city that knows

how I love too well.

There is a grainy chill

no one expects from

Texas in November.

Still, I drive, loving

on my pale knuckles,

the scent of half-ices.

Somewhere is better

there than anywhere

with real, smile-free people.

At the café, lava lamps

unspool neon clumps

in a magnetic slow dance.

Skinny daughters stare

into bathroom mirrors,

phones crackling against

puffy chests and faces.

Outside—unripe
​
Christmas jazz.

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​Jenny Chu writes from Dallas, Texas. Her work is forthcoming from or appears in Pithead Chapel, The Shore, and Gone Lawn, and she is editor-in-chief of two literary magazines and reads poetry for Okay Donkey. She really loves Swedish Fish.