[After Gerald Stern]

As I nursed heartbreak after my first boyfriend
left me for someone with perkier glutes and a healthy
trust fund, my phone vibrated with the telltale rhythm
of a message from an app for finding “Mr. Right Now”
more than “Mr. Right,” so I stopped, scrolled, and saw
a response to an overture I made late at night, when
I indulged in desires for men above my station,
nor can I explain the astonishment at his favorable reply 
and how he found scintillation in my humdrum 
profile, and I was not for a second deluded that there 
was any possibility for a future, but in that moment
when I could not muster even a scrap of self-respect, 
it had nothing to do with how I would just be a means
to scratch his itch, it only mattered that my reverie
of a clandestine liaison with this dapper, chiseled 
stranger was attainable, which propelled me onto 
his doorstep, and after I rang his doorbell, as if
to counterbalance my frisson of anticipation, 
an ambulance wailed as it sped down the street.