Issue > Poetry
Hal Sirowitz

Hal Sirowitz

Hal Sirowitz is the author of five books of poems, Mother Said (1996) and My Therapist Said (1998), both from Crown/Random House, Father Said (2004) and Before, During, and After (2003), both Soft Skull Press, and the forthcoming Stray Cat Blues (Backwaters Press). Awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, Hal is the former Poet Laureate of Queens, New York.

Dirty Restrooms Can Kill Love

When a man is driving down that freeway of love, the woman he's involved with is like an exit. But he doesn't want to get out, he wants to keep driving.
—Jerry Seinfeld
Driving down the freeway
of love, it looked like we

were driving up to me. But
I didn't want to argue. She

wanted to make a restroom stop.
Nature was calling and would

continue to call until we stopped
somewhere. I didn't want to get

in the way of nature, so we stopped
at a gas station. She said the restroom

was too dirty to use. I said the restroom
wasn't for scenery—we'd have the mountains

up ahead for that. But she continued
to bitch about the restroom until she

made me feel responsible. We never
got back on that freeway.

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