This poem was originally performed January 1, 2013, for the Tuesday Funk Reading Series. It was later published in The Piltdown Review.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedI make it my general practice
not to drink and write.
At least, I try not to drink
when writing fiction,
where the prose should be clear
and lucid as water,
even as it refracts the light.

But poetry's a different matter.
A little whisky never
hurt a poem. Not much, anyway.
Certainly not this
glass of it, distilled from smoke
that might have
scribbled words like these in
the air as it
jittered away, leaving only this
amber residue,
not so transparent as it appears. ∅