Pull Tab Poet Hustler by Susan Cossette

Come on baby, Mama needs a cut and color,
and to pay the landscaper.
 
I need a new living room sofa,
and save for retirement.
I need to pay the mortgage.
 
Come on baby, Mama needs a new life.
 
You ain’t gonna get that from playin’ the $1 pull tab bin, sister.
 
Plastic basket of infertile cardboard,
your brightly colored stars and smiley faces taunt me,
just like the poetry editors.
It’s a numbers game, more in, less out.
 
Table 7 at the Legion Hall is my escape,
free internet, cheap wine, 
and all the pull tab tickets you can’t afford.
All the poems you wish you could write, but can’t.
 
Sometimes the sympathetic gods take pity.
One hundred fifty dollars!
Shoot the moon, money burn!
The old guffers at the bar tell me to pipe down.
 
Blondie, I just spent 50 bucks and won two.
Can I sit by you?
You got luck!
 
You can, if you spot the next round, bro.
 
Let me call my AA sponsor,
Before I call the gambling addiction hotline.
They’re both on speed dial.
 
Yeah, there’s a poem in here.

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, Vita Brevis, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Tuesdays at Curley’s and After the Equinox.