Teenage Nights

by Julene Tripp Weaver

His name was Alex Hornblatt.

A thin boy with long brown hair.

He played guitar, read philosophy

lived in a brick house on the better

side of Queens than I. He was a runt

with a sharp tongue curved Jewish

smart. I walked by his house

listening for his guitar, Dylan

songs from his bedroom mixed with 

honeysuckle tinctured the night air.

My adolescent body swooned.

He never had a word to say to me.

My best friend indulged me to walk

past his house night after warm night

with nothing to do but wonder how

to knock on his door, what to say.

He invited us in when he heard we had pot.

The great entrance until he kissed my friend

in the corner, I sulked silently away.

* * * * *

"Teenage Nights" was previously published in Cliterature (Theme: Appetite, 2011).

Julene Tripp Weaver is a psychotherapist and writer in Seattle. She has three poetry books: truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, No Father Can Save Her, and a chapbook, Case Walking: An AIDS Case Manager Wails Her Blues. She is widely published in journals and anthologies. A few online sites where her work can be found include: Riverbabble, River & South Review, The Seattle Review of Books, HIV Here & Now, Mad Swirl, Anti-Heroin Chic, Writing in a Woman's Voice, and in the Stonewall Legacy Anthology. Find her online at www.julenetrippweaver.com, or Twitter @trippweavepoet.