Lowball

by Lois Marie Harrod (July 2020)

Woman at Table in Strong Light, Richard Diebenkorn, 1959

Lowball

to toe-fall, palling as it

slipped my hand

in the muddle of the night,

old-fashioned whisky glass,

the scotch I wasn’t drinking

just thirsty in the piddle

of my plight, seeking

for the first tumbler

in the cupboard, half-awake

glassy-eyed, until it hit, the blast,

lead crystal hard stuff rocks lass,

the stuff I never drink, heavy

splitting my middle toe, fiddle flow

riddle of the tired and trite,

and I wasn’t drinking,

dry as a tough duck stricken

by a krait, and how it hurt,

that shot in the dark.

Today I’m limping.

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Lois Marie Harrod‘s 17th collection Woman was published by Blue Lyra in February 2020. Her Nightmares of the Minor Poet appeared in June 2016 from Five Oaks; her chapbook And She Took the Heart appeared in January 2016; Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis (Cherry Grove Press) and the chapbook How Marlene Mae Longs for Truth (Dancing Girl Press) appeared in 2013. A Dodge poet, she is published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. She teaches at the Evergreen Forum in Princeton and at The College of New Jersey. Links to her online work www.loismarieharrod.org

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