At Charmaine’s Pool Table By Isabelle Bohl

in the house built by her father’s own hands,

Chris tells us he’s played there since he was 17,

before he catapulted past a windshield,

before the coma.

He stutters first, but soon

words flow smooth

as moonshine from jars

and the two players start taking aim, talking trash.

Watch this and sheeits

fly when he sets sweet line-ups,

sinking solids with an eye

on who’s calling the shots. My friend

looks out for this neighbor,

even when he’s fixing to rile her

Sweet Lord with coarseness.

Nah, that’s not your shot, and I told you so’s

rewind time.

We don’t know when we are.

Wannanother ass whoopin’?

The game’s real with chance brotherhood

no one wants to end. The jigger

I poured him after a first beer for DTs

stands full.

Hey, I’m just saying, man

And Charmaine—

delighted her father still gathers people

in his basement years after he’s been gone—

leans to me and whispers,

“See, everyone is everything.”

Isabelle Bohl is a retired teacher who lives with her husband in the Northern Adirondacks of New York State. So far, her poems have appeared in Quartet Journal and the anthology Voices (2024).