by Chris Dollard

Liquored-up words spit from his gob.
He slaps the bouncer for ripping his shirt
while being dragged from the bar
and staggers onto the sidewalk,
hurling epithets and falling down the street.
Give him a pack of matches
and some gasoline and see how far he’d go—
arson or suicide?
He looks up at the gargoyle faces
on City Hall and remembers
his ex-wife, cheap bartenders,
debt collectors, forgotten sons.
Shirt collar tattered
like a war-torn flag on his shoulder:
wrecking-ball heart,
brain of ashes and saliva,
buckshot tongue,
eyes like melting coins.
Headlights swerve around him
as he stumbles across Broadway,
howling at the streetlamp
as if it were the moon.

 
CHRIS DOLLARD was born in Montville, CT, and raised in South Kingstown, RI. His work has appeared in Interrobang?! Magazine, The New Verse News and The North Central Review. He is also the poetry editor for Shoreline, the Rhode Island College literary magazine. He lives in Providence, RI.