I’m chilling and doing homework tonight. Leaning into it.

Last night one of our suitemates (Julia) turned 21 - she’s barable. Not that we get carded anywhere - I’ve never had trouble getting into clubs or ordering drinks - I mean never have I ever.

She had her birthday party at a place called Mory’s, in New Haven, which is very Yale themed. We ate dinner in the “captain’s room,” where every picture on the wall is a Yale team captain of some sort. They even have a whiffenpoof plaque. It’s so Yale-core it’s funny.

Have you ever heard of a drink called a “Singapore Sling?” Me neither, until last night. Then, somehow, there were undrinkable oceans of it. I had six of them, sitting at a bar and I felt nothing. Then I stood up and my bones seemed to liquify. Leong and Anna reeled me in.

I was hangin this morning though, I mean rocky-socks drunkover. My senses seemed sharper, my optical nerves dialed up all the way. The air seemed bright and I swear I could’ve heard the sun burning if people would’ve just stopped all that annoying breathing.

I had a biochemistry quiz at 9am and I can’t wait to see how I did. Later, at breakfast (I had a piece of toast), Peter felt free to offer his sensible, 26-year-old, bropinion. I said, “You’re so wise,” as I steel-eyed him, “I-guess-you-never.”

By the afternoon I was back on my toes. Almost every night my roommates and I sit around a low table in the common room of our suite, crossed legged, on cushions and do our homework. It’s less claustrophobic than sitting in our rooms alone and we usually have some music on, lowkey, in the background.
We’d just heard “Love Story,” by Taylor Swift.

“I like songs that make love sound easy.” I stated.
“Oh, because it IS easy,” Anna says sarcastically, “grab yourself a physicist and make a TikTok song.”

“Hey! I’ve got a beef with TikTok artists, I said. “At first, they release these stripped down, intimate, acoustic songs that feel personal, and then, if a song hits, they put out a new version that’s totally overproduced.”
“Right.” Leong agreed.  
“Oh, yeah,” Sophie said, putting her hair back out of her face with a comb, “and some artists' voices are suited to simple accompaniment and the newer versions just don’t hit as hard.”

“I think Phoebe Bridgers is an example of production done right.” Anna said. “Her material continues to sound intimate and stripped down even though it’s no longer just her and a guitar,”

“On Tiktok,” Lisa adds, “when a new song works, I feel a connection, like it could be me recording a song with my guitar - so, I support them.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” I updogged, “there’s a place for overproduction but sometimes the instruments don’t even sound real, like when they go all out electronic - then they lose me.”

“The big-music might drown-out the artistry we liked,” Anna opined, “but maybe that’s how they heard it, as songwriters, in their imagination, but they couldn’t afford it - the new version rectifies it.”

Hangovers are a back-tax on fun.

To paraphrase T.S. Eliot:
"Can last night just belong to last night?”

I’m not thinking about sins and penance
or making any bound-for-failure resolutions.

I’m giving myself a mental health break.

We were once well acquainted
with the wee small hours
adept at navigating neon jungles
and the deeps of kitchen philosophies
entwined with kebabs and illicit frissons,  
in vino veritas conspiracies
that took weeks to unpick and apologise for
but passed

Now, if seen, those hours hold different snags,
surrounding plants are far less exotic
but familiar brambles cut deep,
immutable truths roar
when the ***** doesn’t do the talking
and morning burrs not so easily dislodged
by a full English and a million teas

Hangovers
by Michael R. Burch

We forget that, before we were born,
our parents had “lives” of their own,
ran drunk in the streets, or half-******.

Yes, our parents had lives of their own
until we were born; then, undone,
they were buying their parents gravestones

and finding gray hairs of their own
(because we were born lacking some
of their curious habits, but soon

would certainly get them). Half-******,
we watched them dig graves of their own.
Their lives would be over too soon

for their curious habits to bloom
in us (though our children were born
nine months from that night on the town

when, punch-drunk in the streets or half-******,
we first proved we had lives of our own).

Published by Barbitos, Trinacria, Songs and Poems that Changed the World (reference.com), Atomic Publishing and The Eclectic Muse

Keywords/Tags: Villanelle, hangovers, drugs, alcohol, drunk, ******, parents, children, graves, death, habit, bad habits, wasted, drink, drinking, *****, liquor, beer, wine, tombs, gravestones, headstones, lives, deaths, pregnant, pregnancy, pregnancies

The compromised daylight still pours into the white Chevy where a rifle sits passenger- there will still be whisky on his lips when he walks into work.

Her body braces like she has rigor mortis to the sound of her morning alarm after a night of writhing to the bittersweet taste of ******* drips.

He seeks solace between arms and hips and lips and skin, which never satiates his ache for only her.



Time is a parasitic hangover, leaching from our highs and the small passing moment of brightness we seek all our lives.

Even if you cancel all your credit cards, make love to beautiful strangers, sleep in the streets, find yourself in Europe, lose yourself in your career, curse your parents for your own faults, write poetry to lovers you never had, seize every day every second every moment, join a cult in the backwoods of Northern California, donate your retirement to your church, torment your veins until they collapse into craters, visit your grandma religiously every Sunday, smoke ****** off of tinfoil, sleep eight hours a day and always take the stairs, drink Black Velvet you've hidden in the basement, bribe God to love you on Sundays and threaten him on Mondays. Even when we wait, even when we consent to waste away Time's a slow-creeping hangover already crawling up your spine and seeping into your brain. You won't have time to ask her why all she does is take. It's already too late.

Tequila kisses & ***** thoughts,
Hungover love shines through tired eyelids of mine
Drink, drank, drunk, on liquor, on each other.
Punch drunk love, is not real love.

I know you're my hangover love.

The barista doesn’t look
you in eye anymore.

You’re wearing that blue checkered
romper from the night before,
the one that leaves little
to the imagination
of the scholarly humans,
all up before the ripe time of 10.

And now it’s noon
and you’ve slept through
3 phone calls and you’re not even sure
if you’re bank account will allow
for the $2 iced coffee
you’re about to **** down.

But you buy
all the overpriced
caffeine anyway,
because today’s a new day
and if you stop moving
you might notice the wound,
and the pain,
and start to bleed,
and realize its going to make
a mess so maybe
its time for an Irish exit
and leave.