Rank

Taking stock of the shots
sustained over the course of the night.
There is a chorus line on a
poorly lit stage, and half of
the dancers are drunk.
The people at the bar are
quiet, but still whispering
about the usual bullshit.
No one is getting paid enough,
and no one is going to be
free the next morning.
One sleeve is torn off
a salesman’s jacket,
but he has been carrying
on like everything is normal.
He says he can’t remember how
he lost it.
Stumbling into the bathroom,
they all wipe with pages of
old verse collections,
Frost being bound with
the softest paper.
They dizzily file themselves
out the door when the daylight
pierces the one small window above
the fireplace, and sort themselves out
by who they were the day before.