My Last Time at the Palms of Joy By jim bourey

On my route from the bus stop 

to the Palms of Joy bar

I had to pass the 

Christian Science Reading Room.

Science and the Savior

didn’t seem like a bad combination 

but my years in Catholic school

brought no mention of Jesus in a lab coat 

handling beakers and the small hell 

of a Bunsen burner. 

Since the Palms was my regular bar,

and the only one that would serve 

a seventeen-year-old

one-stripe airman with a fake ID, 

I walked by that storefront

nearly every day, a pattern

that didn’t bode well for a 

career in the military.

But an argument with an old boozer

about the healing power of faith,

followed by an impromptu

table-top striptease from his

nearly toothless, sixty-something

girlfriend (yes, I watched her too closely)

followed by a minor brawl

and my ejection out to the sidewalk,

face down, cured me of habitual

drinking. (for a long time anyway)

And I rarely argue about religion,

not even now when it could be

of some benefit

in these rapidly disappearing days.

jim bourey is an old poet from the northern edge of the Adirondack Mountains in New York. His latest book "The Distance Between Us" was published in 202 by Cold River Press. And he also had an award winning chapbook called "Silence, Interrupted" back in 2015 from The Broadkill Press. His work has appeared in The Rye Whiskey Review, Gargoyle, Mojave River Review, and many other journals and anthologies in print and online. He can usually be found reading poetry aloud in dimly lit rooms.