Americana
night in the French Quarter
Pacing
past the movie trailers and the t-shirt shops advertising drunk
Stench
of garbage like a bison carcass housing a family of opossums
Brewing
marsupial pouch afterbirth wafting from a tail wind
Forty
degrees in November drizzle rain and the Shim Sham is now One Eyed Jacks
The
entry way shifted and he orders an Old Fashioned from the tender
Ten
dollars down and a gratuity to a woman in faux cat ears
Wandering
a circle of punk shows from his youth, he sips in the bitters
Guitar
players strumming about the allures of whiskey
Nights
of conversations that tilt the neck of the world
To
give it all up just for the gasoline words
To
fuel a man’s madness when everything burns
He
stares up at the framed portraits of nude women above the elevated stairs
Like
a hallway of curved bodies wrapping hair around fingers
The
way she did and he remembers she told him she dances here
She
once wanted to be a Shim-Shamette and prance on stage
So
that when he looks at the Nashville skyline strumming
About
One More Night in Brooklynn or Rogers Park
The
image of the winking one-eyed Jack in red with all the suits but diamonds
All
he sees is her
The
balladeer plays Learning How to Cry
He
feels his brother’s hand on his shoulder
Knowing
his sibling thinks he is thinking of three broken hearts ago
Like
stuck pig layers built on each other in a tower-house of cards
He
guesses they are all the same this last one just happened to be a dancer
So
he has yet to picture her image still
Always
drifting through and he thinks,
“If
you have no place for me, I have no mental canvas for you.”
Lying
to himself swerves a fender into an oak to not paint her in
Until
he can spill black acrylic all over the floor, just coat it in whiskey
Or
the lies of a pretty face to pretend for a few hours before he ruins it with
honesty
Better
a conspiracy of good nights back to back stitched like a body
Beyond
the French Quarter fit for living rooms and sofas, stories and kind monsters
Wishing
she was one of those and his pages would have meant a damn
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