I Want To Call My Bartenders by Alec Solomita

I want to call my bartenders
to talk about their new cocktails,
I want Yanna to show me how to
make a Bellini, and then 
slip me one on the house. 
I’m tired of my whining old friends
and their fucking nephews and nieces.
I’m tired of zoom meetings 
with my nonagenarian uncle
who was never nice to my mother,
not much, anyways, let’s face it.

And I shrink at the
sound of my ex-girlfriend,
which is a no-sound
I don’t know what to do with. 
No, it’s the bartenders I miss
and the gleam of a wooden bar.

Alec Solomita’s fiction has appeared in the Southwest Review, The Mississippi Review, Southword Journal, and Peacock, among other publications. He was shortlisted by the Bridport Prize and Southword Journal, and named a finalist by the Noctua Review. His poetry has appeared in Poetica, Litbreak, Driftwood Press, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Rye Whiskey Review, Panoplyzine, and elsewhere, including several anthologies. His poetry chapbook, “Do Not Forsake Me,” was published in 2017. He lives in Massachusetts.