A WHISKEY INTERMISSION

 
Balcony flowers scent the air.
Street vendors stroll to sell
incense, candles, loose cigarettes.
Road tramps rest on church steps,
pass maps, tips for soup kitchens,
best hand-out, hangout corners.
Telling a story about hot air balloons
and Diamond Bay strippers,
the whiskey poet loafs
outside the Yellow Rose,
playing Mexican Train dominoes
with an Alabama debutante.

Tiles, fingernails, emerald rings clatter
on the tin-top table.
The debutante remarks,
“Rockabilly died on my 6th birthday.”
“At least there was cake,” the poet replies.
Range Rover, gypsy cab, Uber
pause at his streetside table.
Fighter-pilots, boxers,
the richly indolent bring
messages and money.
Outraged Japanese scholars wave
their tanka manifestos.
Evening ring of food trucks arrive
as the afternoon paper headlines:
“Zapata killed; Villa cuts a deal.”

Ignoring the silks and scarves of
the racing season’s final parade,
Army officers and their mistresses
crowding hotel cafes,
chain gangs building
little altars for the dead,
the whiskey poet retrieves his journal,
his cane and coat from the bar-back.
Sunburned, scooping up
change from a twenty,
he sighs a goodbye,
joins the hardhat mestizos walk
toward pickup trucks,
mercados, sunset’s end.