Blood Usury by Don Robishaw

Make a deposit at the blood bank Twelve dollars Late only ten.
Hang out drain all their OJ.                                           
Thank you for your donation. Thank you for your service Sergeant Robinson.
Can’t stay here all day.
It’s Willie please.
                       
Hit the street.
Cash ten dollar check around corner at Multi-service Packy.
Only get back eight.
Blood usury.
Bull-shite. 

Gypsy girl with the melancholy eyes,
reminds me of a lost daughter someplace somewhere. 
Gypsy girl touches hand twists it over scans lines,
frowns and shakes her head.
Gypsy girl knows.

Never ever charges me for coffee at the Packy.     
Never ever says thank you for your service.       
Willie have a nice day.                               
Smiles hands over Java and the paper sack.

You’re a good kid I say.
         
Fran from shelter waits outside sipping bad coffee.
We linger and shiver.
The hell with me liver.
Owner pounds plate glass window.
We get it Go on and call the cops Louie GO ON!

We gotta move says Fran.                         
Gonna get fucked-up Fran. 
She laughs Slaps my shoulder.                   
Loss of blood and cheap wine causes flashbacks though.
Willie I’m here for ya baby Don’t even think about ‘em ‘aye.

Before Don Robishaw stopped working to write, he ran educational programs for homeless shelters for thirteen years. 

Don's also well-traveled, using various ways and means: Sailor, Peace Corps Volunteer, bartender, hitchhiker, world traveler, college professor, and circus roustabout.

His work has recently appeared in, The Rye Whiskey Review, Drunk Monkeys,O’ Dark Thirty, Literary Orphans, Crack-the-Spine, The Remembered Arts, Open: Journal of Arts and Letters, Flash Fiction Magazine, and others. His chapbook, ‘Willie’s Bad Paper Odyssey’ was a semi-finalist in Digging Press 2018 Summer Chapbook Contest.

He like to write poetry, satire, tragedies, and gritty fictional tales — of men and women from various backgrounds — that may have sprouted from a seed, from his past.

Many of the characters he developed have been homeless, served for periods of time in the military, or are based upon archetypes or sterotypes he's met while on the road.