It’s at least one, maybe creeping up on two.
I don’t wear a watch and I’m off my meds.
I’m getting that beggared feeling in my gut,
that a knife will soon be pushing through it
if I don’t get high.
There are no medicine cabinets
or pocketbooks to rifle this time of day,
but the convenience stores sell wine till two,
and I have a few bucks.
The last door of the beer box was the wine cooler,
with a poster above showing yuppies sitting
on their Lamborghini, drinking Prosecco.
The bottom shelf was Ripple,
Thunderbird, Richards Wild Rose,
but it was empty,
and I’m envisioning a caravan of derelicts
staggering up and down the boardwalk
drinking my evening compulsion.
Next row up was four flavors of Boone’s Farm
and I’m thinking I’ll need two,
and a place to throw up,
only have cash for one.
You ease around the corner grazing the chip display,
tiny black bikini, white tank top, shades:
there’s a half pint of Smirnoff peeking out of your
beach bag that would fortify this Strawberry Hill
crap and maybe make it drinkable.
I lean your way as cool as I can muster,
give you my best Steve McQueen smile
and offer to buy you a bag of Frito Lay.
Like in an Elizabethan play,
with a line written by Shakespeare,
as though the God’s were watching and
empathizing with my evening’s plight,
you look over at me, smile and ask,
“Do you want to get stoned?”
Craig R. Kirchner
Craig Kirchner loves storytelling. He has been nominated for the Pushcart three times, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels.
After a hiatus he’s been published in Chiron Review, The Main Street Rag, One Art, Dark Winter, Glacial Hill Review and about eight dozen other journals and magazines.