Enda Doyle: Baristas Always Break Your Heart

Dragged through the ivory gates into a heavy jacket October morning

sleep-eyed and semi-sentient I Karloff shamble into the city centre.

Once again, I have been called to the bar, the artisanal coffee bar.

Great Victoria Street’s last sanctuary for leisure and contemplation,

among the touchscreen take away assembly line chain stores.

Sacred as morning payer this ritual of ground beans and daydreaming,

before endless cups of instant and the purgatory of emails, emails, emails.

At the counter the barista has already prepared my medium Americano.

We exchange angel-light banalities of the kind I would normally despise

for she has the flash of wit strong enough to draw humour from the greyest man

and her smile is a charm to vanquish the gloom of a Monday in Autumn.

Paying for the coffee (with tip) a flock of fantasies take flight in my head,

does she read? Can she play guitar? Will she listen to my poems with tolerance?

Stirring the milk into my drink I notice care and grace with which she blesses every order,

a small cappuccino for her, double espresso for him, six hot chocolates for the schoolkids.

As much as coffee making this is her art, she came to work especially to see you and her

and him, she pours specialness into every cup, severs every drink with a side of friendliness,

loyal to every loyalty card holder she is everyone’s closest confidant for a single transaction.

The ‘personal touch’ can feel cold as snowman’s handshake when it is not sincere.

Your landlord may rob you; your boss can ruin your day, but baristas always break your heart.

Enda Boyle was born in Derry in 1994. He was educated at Ulster University and Queen's University Belfast. He currently lives in Belfast and works an office job. In 2023 he published the Back Room Poetry chapbook Love Songs of The Precariously Employed.

James Kangas: Magnetic Field

In a Chicago bar, in my 20s, I learned

to prop myself up for half the night, nurse

two drinks maybe, stare at anyone I thought

I might love, leave, if lucky, with an evening

star for the Farwell Beach playground, say,

for a little--communion. We might seesaw,

swing, stick our feet in the water, go round

and round the simple carousel (hinging,

of course, on his playfulness) till the sun

rose over the lake like a ruddy lover, Somehow,

looking back, that part seems the best. I was

always hungry, he seemed, always, beautiful.

Then, when finally our hopeful bodies

begged us for deliverance, I’d sometimes push

to exchange the next move for a number,

which, if I dialled it later, might bring

back that magic ache (the ache

of two magnets held a bare millimetre apart),

denial the weird force holding us

in a kind of union.

[Originally published in Wilde Magazine Issue 1, Winter 2012]

James Kangas is a retired librarian living in Flint, Michigan. His work has been published in Adroit Journal, Free State Review, New World Writing, Tampa Review, West Branch, et al. His chapbook, Breath of Eden (Sibling Rivalry Press), was published in 2019.