Friday, July 25, 2025

Ain't Too Proud To Beg by Sam Barbee

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).