The Coin Pusher By Keith Gorman

We’ve all seen these contraptions, neatly

cornered in an arcade or discreetly stationed

in a neighborhood mini-mart: coin-operated

gambling machines that are almost as addictive

 

as Demerol, with stainless-steel coin slots

positioned at the top, where quarters drop at    

random onto an oscillating gameboard, allowing

each leveled coin to edge against

 

a neighboring coin, inching forward, bit by bit 

toward an overdrop, where a fixed barricade 

forces a few prized coins to tumble into a 

payout bin below. Of course,

 

the house always wins. More silver circulates

than is ever retrieved, and the more a person plays,

the more they want to win. But players know that

winning’s a sham, that stakes are rigged, that

 

despite their efforts to outfox the game, fight 

five o’clock fires at the world’s far end or feed

four hungry mouths with three hopeless jobs,

the outcome is always the same.

Keith Gorman is a retired Appalachian poet who resides with his two cats, Iggy and Ozzy, near the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Eastern Tennessee. He is a scholarship recipient and graduate of The Sherwood Conservatory of Music in Chicago, Illinois. Currently, he divides his time between writing and hiking the slopes. His poetry appears in various journals, including I-70 Review, Chiron Review, Slipstream, Broadriver Review, Delta Poetry Review, Salvation South, and Naugatuck River Review.