Eighteen by Peter Mladinic

I’d like to say it was Smalls, a landmark

but it wasn’t, it was the Top Club,

almost right across from the Baby Grande,

which in ‘66 was famous, so I heard.

Scotch and milk, the big drink, the bugaloo 

the dance. You extended your arms, waved

them up and down, snapped your fingers

like you were ready to welcome someone

into you, only it wasn’t a hugging dance.

John and James had dark skin, John, 

a shade darker was called Chip.  Times,

if not for Chip I’d have been drinking alone

at the bar.  He taught junior high math.

He jabbered, talked quietly and a lot, some

nights to himself.  A lot shorter than James,

the big difference, I didn’t think of then,

was Chip was alone.  James’ wife Gloria,

tall with red hair and almond cat’s eyes

shook a canister and poured whisky sours

behind the bar. James was there because 

Gloria was, tall and handsome, light skinned

like Velma, who also was a barmaid. Velma,

from Mobile, could sing, but didn’t there.

Chip was there, jabbering.  Sometimes, 

were he not, I’d have been drinking alone.

Though people talked with me: Sonny, 

who’s surname I’ve forgotten, Leon Wilson, 

a stud in his black lid, cashmere

blond top coat, pencil mustache, 24,

whereas Sonny, who wore a black leather,

a lid tilted back, a scraggy goatee, was 26.

Velma was 28.  She dated Chuck Jackson

once or twice, she said, The Chuck Jackson

of “Any Day Now.”  He was big.  I saw him 

at the Apollo, down from the Baby Grande.

Gloria Prince, a barmaid, short, chubby

 

looked like the singer Gloria Lynne. Frankie 

Smith, like Sonny, wore a black leather 

cut past the waist. He never wore a lid.

I visited his room, narrow like a closet. I rode

in James’ sedan, with James and Gloria,

their surname Jones, at night on the FDR

above the East River. It was when Viet Nam

was just starting.  It wasn’t Smalls, a fancier 

club, nine blocks up from where we were.

Peter Mladinic’s fourth book of poems, Knives on a Table is available from Better Than Starbucks Publications.

An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico.