The long r
rolling out on a wooden bar
the easy drone of a rock guitar
Phil Collins in a vest
log fire
gambling machine
plastic plant,
the men in a row
sinking pints, dressed
in combat trousers
and dark sweatshirts.
A distinct voice rows through
the chatter like a canoe,
the clink of glasses
out the dishwasher,
the steam rising up
to the glass lampshade
where the bartender
banged her head.
Every other thing is a joke,
every body, every stool,
every flute glass,
plays a role, plays the fool.
He rolls a cigarette
from borrowed tobacco
That’s a bloody Cuban cigar.
The single ice cube
in the whiskey glass has shrunk
to a transparent claw.
Sometimes the interiority
is squeezed out of you,
in the off-guard local,
a larger living room.
A place contains its own point,
own hook, fishes
whatever is in isolation
out your mind and sets it
in the brick and wood’s own time,
the babble and flash and flicker
of the flat screen TV,
roman numerals on the clock face,
the evening fractured and warm
our arms crossed
another Monday gone.