Tonight's Poet Corner: The Daily Drunkard

The Daily Drunkard
by Belinda Roddie

The bartender reads my mind like
I'm a book with the index wide open,
mixing me something sour enough to
almost make my teeth turn inward.

I pinch a peanut from the bowl hard enough
to hear the shell crack and split in half, like
San Francisco's scars back in nineteen o'six.
Plate tectonics shift. So do my bones.
Forty-five, to me, feels like eighty.

Scouting out a gray hair in my beard, I watch
two college girls huddling in the corner
of the bar, taking pictures on their cellphones,
flashing the peace sign. I'm ready to give it

to them in reverse when the bartender sets
another full glass down in front of me. Scoured
my psyche again. I ought to give her a tip. I'd
give her a kiss, but I think she'd clock me first.

I can hardly taste the gin in my drinks anymore.
In fact, I can hardly taste anything at all. The room
spins like perfect clockwork before my knees hit
the floor. I don't know where I'll wake up

tomorrow, but if I were to hazard a guess, I'm sure
wherever I land will be a Hell of a lot better
than where I came from.