-
The Game
- Callaloo
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 26, Number 3, Summer 2003
- pp. 585-586
- 10.1353/cal.2003.0112
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Callaloo 26.3 (2003) 585-586
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( The Game )
Kevin Young
Here the ashtrays smoke
by themselves, wind
kicking up enough
thick grey to choke
even the dead awake.
I sit with my back
to the wall, face
the glassless door.
This place. Trust
only those you don't
know. When Johnny
Two-Tone waltzes by
silently pat your
packed side. Heat.
Saturday night
special. 38. The small
door in the back,
a judas eye, hides
rooms where hands pray
to dice lopsided
as my walk. Flush. Three
ladies. Two ace. [End Page 585]
While Abyssinia Ned
cashes in
& Walter Walleye
wins again—a straight—
while Cootie Le Curfew
curses his fate & Delilah
Redbone charms the place,
let's you & me wash
down the day—a toast—
To my enemies' enemies!
Let's try to spirit away
her beautiful, half-lit face
raising dirty mason jars
of soured grapes.
Kevin Young is Ruth Lilly Professor of Poetry at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author of Jelly Roll: A Blues (2003), To Repel Ghosts (2001), and Most Way Home (1995), selected by Lucille Clifton as part of the National Poetry Series and winner of the John C. Zacharis First Book Prize from Ploughshares. His Blues Poems anthology will be published as part of the Everyman Pocket Poets series September 2003.
Copyright © 2003, Kevin Young.
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