Once he spoke the indirect speech of men,
as if making bar bets after third drinks
that become sincere, become angry, mean.
Just his half joke. Some more of his high jinx.
But that gave way to dark rage long held in,
told in such a way it seems soft when said.
Yet by night's end, fists flew, someone's nose bled.
We missed him for a week or two. Before
his wife and kids and priest brought him back in.
“This is where his real life had been. More
home than his home. We were more like his kin.”
They moaned, sighing their funeral chorus.
“He loved us, always missed us,” they told us.
They begged the barkeep: "Take his ashes in.
We burned him so he won't take up much room."
There's a box today where his seat had been
across from the shelf of mid-range bourbon--
dark wood, maybe walnut, not mahogany
that would have been too ornate, too fancy.
Carved into the top: "He loved and was loved."
And the crude image of a boxing glove.
Paul Jones’ poems landed on the moon in February 2024.
In 2021, Jones entered the NC State Computer Science Hall of Fame.
In 2024, Jones’ poem “Geode” was plagiarized multiple times by the notorious offender, John Kucera.
Jones’ books are Something Wonderful (2021) and Something Necessary (2024). Both from Redhawk Press.
Recent poems in Hudson Review, Salvation South, Southern Poetry Review, New Verse Review, and in Best American Erotic Poems (1800-Present).
http://smalljones.com
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