Stars In Bars By Trish Saunders

Just one thing more about
last night at the Kit Kat Klub,
King Street has gone quiet at 2:00 a.m.,
but not that 3:00 a.m. quiet
that knocks the heart out of you,

and Tom Mix is alone at the bar
rhinestoned and cowboy hatted,
still handsome, and he says to you, a five-year-old boy
sitting spellbound up in the cheap seats: 
“I’m not going to join that circus,
not going to crack a whip at some toothless old lion.”

And he’s the silent heartthrob who raced Tony,
his horse, up a fire escape, right after he lassoed a locomotive?
Could you point at the door, some insufferable A.D.
yelling CUT! on his career?

Evening, Mr. Mix, very glad to pour one more,
in fact I’ll join you. Let’s drink from a glass of stars,
and toast the wonders the night might still bring.
Look at that Honolulu moon--
so close, you could throw your shoe and hit it.

Trish Saunders writes poems and short fiction from Seattle, formerly Honolulu. She has been published in The American Journal of Poetry, Punk Noir Magazine, Medusa’s Kitchen, Off The Coast, Pacifica Poetry Review, and the Rye Whiskey Review.