Tag Archives: Small Town

THE BEER PARLOR

THE BEER PARLOR

Politics and weather

Little round seated chairs
no-one could have sat on
ten minutes completely sober

Little round tables
completely covered at last call
fluted glasses perfectly filled
to the well marked tide line
(no charging for foam here)

Smell of well aged
beer, barf and barn boots
but no matter, it was men only
and they didn’t seem to care

In the service of progress I guess
it was decided by the province
that each town could vote
on women being allowed
to enter these sacred halls

George, the owner,
a man of steady habits
and unshakable prejudices
thinly disguised as principles
said “If you vote for this I close the place”
They did, and he did

SMALL TOWN – GRADE SEVEN

SMALL TOWN – GRADE SEVEN

In a town of six or seven hundred
you get a cross section of the country

One classmate’s father’s suicide with shotgun
splattered walls

One boy my age, drowned
in an upturned truck in a muddy ditch

One with leukemia, white as the snow

One redhead, Leslie French, as beautiful and
mysterious as the language

One blonde, Shirley Long, to long for

She’s only interested in grade 9 boys

One bruised heart

Not yet hard enough to be broken

LEA

LEA

When you walked West from your home
down the main street to the
heart of the town
a car driving in from the country
could slip up silently behind you

A quick blast of the horn
and your knees
would collapse and you’d
drop like a stone

Good sport in a small town

If you were walking down that street
today
and I was driving behind
I would be sorely tempted to do it again
but this time
I would want to catch you