Dino's Bar by Dave Newman

The owner's wife
got the bar
in the divorce

the bar which
she had loathed while
they were married

and before
Dino cold buy
it back

she placed
a bouquet
of fake flowers

in a wine-bottle vase
on the waitress station
which one waitress

described as
the only fake flowers
that smelled like real beer

albeit stale real beer.

Dave Newman is the author of six books, includingPlease Don’t Shoot Anyone Tonight (Broken River Books, forthcoming 2018), the novella Sammy Drinks Canned Beer (White Gorilla Press, forthcoming 2018), The Poem Factory (White Gorilla Press, 2015), the novels Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children (Writers Tribe Books, 2012) andTwo Small Birds (Writers Tribe Books, 2014), and the collection The Slaughterhouse Poems (White Gorilla Press, 2013), named one of the best books of the year by L Magazine. Winner of numerous awards, including the Andre Dubus Novella Prize, he lives in Trafford, PA, the last town in the Electric Valley, with his wife, the writer Lori Jakiela, and their two children. He works in medical research, serving elders.