Poetry – Issue 4 | April 2009
Four poems by Suzanne Parker
Drinking the Morning Glass of Red
Five heavy shouldered men stand
at the bar, equally spaced, solitary
as men at a public urinal, so intimate
and forbidden is the experience.
This is not a nice brasserie.
Tables do not get wiped, those who sit
sink against the metal-backed chairs
and the smell is a brown, stuck layer
of sour wine, butts, and burnt egg.
Lottery and phone cards sell quickly
and often from the booth by the door.
Each morning finds me here.
I do not belong: a woman,
American, idle, taking notes
and this is private
as at some point, each man slides
a lottery card across the bar, smooths it
like a creased but much read letter
and picks up the change he has been given.
They never win but simply drop
the cards to the floor as if disposing
of ash. A quick, unseen flick. Then,
they put on hats and head out
into their days. Always, the drink.
The baguette with jam.
The work-cracked hands and sigh
as one man lifts his head, eyes the card,
reaches forward
to yet another kind of work.
About the author
Suzanne Parker has recently returned from a month in Paris where ate a lot of croissants and wrote poems about Framingham, Massachusetts. Suzanne was a finalist for the New Rivers Press Book Award in 2008, and her work has recently appeared in A Gathering of the Tribes, The MacGuffin, NYC BigCityLit, Poetry Motel, Rattapallax and others.
