In All Earnestness at the Liquor Store By Tracy Mitchell

What is it you’re looking for? The clerk asks.

What is it for which I look? I chastise.

She seduces I must be a writer—   

Depends on what you write, she says.

Some take the absinthe, but their seedy texts

slosh in the placenta, and their greedy characters

only grow uglier.  Kafka knows, Poe suspects.

Pointillists do gin, she says, and are usually quiet adroit– 

but their task is the tedious rush to finish a draft

before the question arises – what’s the point?

If you wish to entertain your mates with Irish verse 

which will seem to predate Yeats, then poteen – 

poteen will blend your Irish blood and lead your pen 

into a glen in Aghadoe, Aghadoe, Aghadoe

a deep and secret glen in Aghadoe.

Contrarily, Vodka Jello Shots will launch your perfect leap

to a raging screed, while Meade will plunge you deep

in legend  – soggy saga-bound predilection to score 

the generations to pulp and sleep with fantasies of yore.

SciFi inevitably follows from Tequila; romance and horror 

of course from the untoward,  unchecked  swilling 

of Cabernet.   And Hemingway, you see what that 

got him – the goblet of black Cuban rum he kept refilling.

She pauses and furrows her brow:

Which brings me round to you, my dear– I can tell, 

I can smell the verse you are dying to smear 

through journals and websites and in every ear  

to steer poet folkways toward image and tear,

toward digital darknesses quaint and queer

to serve up nonsense on the point of a spear – 

the mixture for you I deduce without fear – 

to write  your Dada - doo-doo, the prescription is clear – 

one bourbon, one scotch and one beer.

Tracy Mitchell is a Colorado writer nurtured in the tradition of Minnesota poets. His free verse is largely inspired by sacred vagaries of cosmic happenstance, and wonderments of the human experience. Tracy is a contributing member of Poetry Society of Colorado, Florence Critique Group, and The Tangled Branch (online poetry community). His work has appeared in Dream: Tales from the Pikes Peak Writers [Anthology II] , Quill & Parchment, Lake Region Review, Poetry Society of Colorado Showcase, As the Kettle Wolf-Whistles (Anthology), and Califragile (online contemporary journal).