Life at the Arcade
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Ivory balls skitter all directions. The smoke floats low under a green light-shade brooding down on green felt. Two boys circle the table, take turns sending errant shots whumping off cushions on the table sides. A jukebox across the room bumps the air with palpable rhythm. Neon beer signs across the room spelling out icy rumors.
They’re all blown about here like refuse pinned to a fence wire, their future plans no more than what they scrape up and make from what’s around— the colored and striped planets they send caroming about like random atoms, clicking about to a dead stop, in a room where breath hangs. [End Page 189]
Roger Jones is author of three collections of poems. During the spring of 2009, he will begin serving as the poetry editor of the Texas Review.
