Final Version: "Drinking Song"

Drinking Song

Bits of gin label salamander in a Chinese screen,
minding their British sides.

I shouldn’t exist, or be alive.
I fight humor in my shot glass, my bitter pail.

I’m half corpse, complaint-filled,
divorcing emptiness shaped by a chilled rasp.

I make a living in alcoholic forgetting.

Body poured in pale swigs,
inescapable but not whimpering.



from Guest Poet #1: Andrew Demcak
Click here to read the first revision of "Drinking Song"
Click here to read the first draft of "Drinking Song"