Poetic Profit

A cloud of smoke, beery air and hamburger grease waft out the door like a belch. I slip inside and find him at the bar. Silk black shirt, pearl buttons, hair slicked back, he tips a glass. “What good was humility,” he says. “when I was stuck in obscurity. I wanted fame, to be humble in fame.” “Well, you’re famous,” I say, so tell me. Do you know the idea, or just start writing and let it come?” “The idea!” he says. “I always know what to say. “Let me sing you the lyric. to half of all successful poetry.” And in a quiet falsetto he sings, “Saturday I went to town met the guys I hang around had a smoke and a glass of gin till she came in— Dovina Is she beautiful, oh my I see her and almost die I would kneel in the street My forehead on her feet— Dovina” He slow-danced as he sang, a figment-girl in his arms, stroking her thigh, then stopped suddenly. “I don’t think so,” he says sitting, “Not for these guys. They want to forget. They remember their foreheads on feet, and the pain of a swift kick.” “I’m so lonesome I could cry,” he sang. “That’s the song they want. Getting tears in my beer over you.” I ask about free verse, and he frowns. “Nobody's going to pay you, so why do it? Get some cash for your trash.” He promised he’d look at my poems, said I could bring them around sometime.