I slouch at the barroom table. Sip a second hot java
and re-sort last night. Other survivors, would-be
shag dancers and troubadours, line the counter.
Noon's cold fingers tap love's hourglass – twin pendulums,
one hollowing. My arms and head droop
on the checkered tablecloth. The juke box wails
my most-recent sweetheart's song – the classic Temptation's
groove snags right before the bridge – should take control
of this dive where neon promises flutter between
low lights and smudged windows. My hangover resolves
not to rise and smack the spin to skip the record's
polished scar, or the damned fleck of dust allowed to drift free.
This selection further-dizzies my stupor: some 60's hubbub
about a woman who left a lover out of rhythm –
cheated their common ruin, denied passion honorable demise.
I shy from greasy brunch. Dodge bottom-shelf bourbon's
stray bullets. No hairy dog lubricant can punctuate
like salve of silence… But the idle juke box
whirs again as one of my mates rattles in a fresh quarter
to join the other grains of sand pouring toward conclusion.
Our free-spinning chorus of musical prose serenades
somewhere between silvered solutions and no cellphone
message. I hydrate with room-temp coffee.
Pure black as poured.
--
Sam Barbee’s newest collection is Apertures of Voluptuous Force (2022, Redhawk Publishing). He served as President of the Winston-Salem Writers, and also NC Poetry Society; and is one of the originators of the Poetry In Plain Sight — now in its thirteenth year — a poetry initiative featuring NC poets on broadside posters and display them in NC towns statewide. His poems currently appear in Cave Wall, Asheville Poetry Review, and The Anthology of Appalachian Writers (WV).