Progressive by Brian Johnstone

The way she said,
“I thought you might,”
was my undoing;

my chat-up lines
remembered more
for absence

than success. I’d said,
“What sounds are
you into?” Not caring,

but just putting out
the only line
that I could think of

aiming to connect.
Not even that alluring,
but a girl

that was enough.
How she answered
long forgotten;

but remembered
– when she asked me
that same thing –

is her response.
“Prog Rock,” I’d said,
so keen to get it right.

She didn’t wait;
said, turning on her heel,
“I thought you might.”

Brian Johnstone’s work has appeared throughout Scotland, elsewhere in the UK, in North America and in Europe. He has published six collections, most recently ‘Dry Stone Work’ (Arc, 2014), and his work appears on The Poetry Archive website. His memoir ‘Double Exposure’ will be published by Saraband in 2017.

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