I’m a dive-bartender, in a town
tourists might call Butt-fuck
Nowhere. Visitors to my workplace
sometimes look (or listen) around, saying,
“Man, I don’t know how you do it.”
I always smile, “What do you mean?”
Is it the people shitting themselves,
paying no mind to dripping jeans—
too tuned to their VLT?
Ten-dollar blowjobs by the sea-can out back?
Surely, not the 1100-year-old regular
from BX-19?
A former coworker overhearing
one of these conversations
once piped up, smiling,
“To work at this place, you gotta be
fuckin’ poison.”
We laughed.
Except, now I think it’s
harm reduction.
No one’s wife is beaten
while he’s with me. Besides,
in here, the liquor is never
stretched with anti-freeze.
Joe Couture is a writer living in rural Nova Scotia. His most recent work is featured, or forthcoming, in Dark Winter Lit, Rusty Truck, ExPat Press, and SHINE Quarterly. If you want to connect with him, try here: @rjcouture.bsky.social
No comments:
Post a Comment