Nicholas Wright is a former student of Columbia University's MFA program in poetry. He has more poems than he knows what to do with...

Modern Knowledge

The party was held in a room with bad acoustics.
Everyone was talking at the same time—
muffled sentences on poisoned breath.
I could only hear the keywords—
the ones that made me want to drink more.

A man at the bar said, "I
know it like the back of my hand."
Drunkenly,
I grabbed a napkin and tried to draw my hand
from memory,
but I got the measurements all wrong—
and the shading was backwards—
a stranger's claw.
I bet he'd make the same mistake.