HERMANN GÖRING AND PSYCHO HILLBILLY PLAY THE DOZENS IN THE FAR SIDE BAR by David Spicer

Crunching cinnamon Cheerios
and wearing a Sonny Rollins
T-shirt, coffeepot dripping
as desperados in The Far Side Bar
outside West Memphis sipped
cups of black suicide, I watched
the whale-fat rent-a-cop wheeze
toward the counter, twirling
a nightstick, Hermann Göring’s evil
in his anthracite eyes. Singapore
sniped, Hey, Fatboy, ya know
how to use that truncheon, or do ya
suck on it when ya beat off?
Everybody laughed. Fuck you,
you stringy-haired skinny scumbag,
Göring said. Singapore, a hook at the end
of his right forearm, in a maroon silk
jacket adorned with black dragons
and gryphons, snarled, Did ya
know I was a Gotti henchman?
I’m scared, you psycho hillbilly dickwad.
Why don’t you swallow some cyanide?
Ya oughta be scared, Singapore said,
waving his hook an inch away from
Göring’s nose, ’cause I’m thinkin’
we’ll pull a train on your blubber ass
faster than a fish farts. We laughed.
Just then I started singing Ring
of Fire. Göring limped away, his
gleam gone. Why ya always lookin’
for trouble? I asked. It’s a crime
not to, Brucie, plus my chopper
needs a fresh story every night.

David Spicer has published poems in The Santa Clara Review, Synaeresis, Chiron Review, Remington Review, unbroken, Raw, Third Wednesday, Yellow Mama, The Midnite Lane Boutique, The Bookends Review, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Gargoyle, and elsewhere. Nominated for a Best of the Net three times and a Pushcart once, he is author of one full-length poetry collection, Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke's Press). His latest chapbook is From the Limbs of a Pear Tree, (Flutter Press). He lives in Memphis.