Tonight's Poet Corner: Welcome To The Club

Welcome To The Club
by Belinda Roddie

Cabernet flows like blood
from a glassy open wound. We drink
the nectar of the gods until the room spins
like an ornate top. Stained glass faces of saints
stare at us during the vertigo. Again, again, again,
we are given wastebaskets to expel our sins
into, liquids and solids and gases all at once.

At the bar, you kissed a woman on the balcony
while she kept her hair in a bun. She loosened up
by the time your tongue made a heaven out
of her mouth, a celestial halo hovering over both of
you, clinging to mortality as the prophets looked on.

Look up, look up! The city has eyes. They gaze
upon you with frosty blue impartiality. Hear
the fools debate and listen to their songs,
all composed of gibberish and prior restraints.
We were born to drink and pass out, so that

the dawn feels new to us each time. The sunrise
provides us with an opportunity we never imagined
before. The taste of vomit is gone. We are stale
shadows, while your lips dance across the cheeks
of someone whom you want to pretend is your future.