Today’s Poem

Barkeep

The monkey’s not the problem,
I told her. It’s the smoking.
Doesn’t matter what carnival
you’re coming from, Rio’s down
the road, you can smoke there.
She took the cigarette and pulled a trick
most of the boys at the bar had seen
in a book. She blew rings around
the room the rest of the week,
streets went bare as a ghost town.
All the boys at the bar, titling
upward, smoke in their nostrils,
with their heads in the clouds.

-Jason Braun