Set for Life by Cord Moreski

for Chet Moreski 

  

Tearing up another losing lottery ticket

my father tells me as we sit in his backyard  

that if he ever won THE BIG ONE  

he’d give me enough money to be set for life. 

  

He guzzles his Budweiser tallboy empty 

then mentions the usual suspects—the mansion 

on some sunny island off the grid of the world,  

the baked lobster and shrimp cocktail diet,  

and the muscle car that has fewer miles than my age. 

  

I chuckle in response listening to crickets chirp   

in grass that hasn’t been mowed in weeks 

knowing damn well that even with all that money 

I don’t mind the view of the sunrise 

from my one-bedroom apartment,

and if I’m stuck eating cheeseburgers  

and chicken wings for the rest of my life 

then I’m certainly okay with that,

and although a new set of wheels is tempting 

my wife and I have an ongoing bet to see 

if my ’94 clunker will reach 300,000 miles. 

  

I want to tell him all of this  

but I’m interrupted by a quick,  

“But what the hell do I know?” 

I hand him another cold one as we talk 

and laugh under a new summer moon  

stopping every once and a while

to gaze at shooting stars.   

Cord Moreski is a poet from New Jersey. His work has been featured in As It Ought To Be Magazine, Alien Buddha Press, Silver Birch Press, Eunoia Review, The Rusty Truck Press, and several other publications. He is currently working on a new project for late 2020. You can follow Cord here: https://www.cordmoreski.com