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D AV I D H E R N A N D E Z Let’s Drink Now This is where the wrecked convene, and these the stools they plop their stories on, the pool table where they rack their worries and fool themselves: I make this, the test will come back negative. Ask the peroxide blond chalking her cue what’s eating her and she’ll look up, expose the scar zippered shut on her neck where the surgeon removed her lymph nodes. She sinks four, five stripes, takes a long drag from her cigarette, the smoke blotting out her face. See that man hunkered by the jukebox? He drinks until he’s a ship trapped inside a bottle, sailing towards the sun’s cork. Ask and he’ll tell you it was one dark thing after another: tunnel, cavern, tunnel, cavern. Let’s drink now. Something to ignite our embers, heat for our bones. Round after round until the floor seesaws, until the bartender shoves us into the night and the stars zigzag over our heads like fireflies with no idea where to take their light. The 2000s ❚ 261 ...

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