Not Your Bitch–The Poetry Series #9

Featuring
Rebecca Schumejda

Optical Illusions

“A pool player in a tuxedo is like whipped cream on a hot dog.”
-Minnesota Fats

Through the pool hall windows,
I watch slush collect
at the street’s midline and hips.
The snow can’t hold its shape
like a defeated woman.

Outside, struggling business owners
salt sidewalks with fistfuls
of broken dreams,
so the ghosts, prostitutes, and
drug dealers don’t slip.

This side of town wears down
people’s words;
passersby only grunt
if their eyes meet.

Inside The Butcher plays down
his game, hoping the new guy
will challenge him.

With a straight face,
he asks me a basic 9-ball rule.
Knowing pool etiquette,
I answer without looking up
from the book, I pretend to read.

A snow plough redistributes slush.
It’s only 7:30, snowflakes falling
under streetlights are lonely women
disappearing quietly
like all the legitimate businesses
on this street.

Old-Two-Shoes stares
into the front windows
as if they are carnival mirrors,
she gasps at her own reflection.

When the new guy drops
a crisp one hundred dollar bill
on the table, The Butcher says,
Well. . . ah. . . I don’t know
how ’bout twenty and table time?
The new guy racks.

By ten, The Butcher’s down two hundred
and begging,  oh come on man,
one more, my wife’s gonna kick me out
if I can’t make rent. Double or nothing?
The Butcher racks.

By midnight, the slush turns to ice
and the cars that usually accelerate
through this part of town
are forced to slow down.

The Butcher turned the tables;
he is up two hundred
and acting like a school girl
discovering the power of her tits
for the first time.

Later, when The Butcher
pulls into the driveway,
he swears he sees his wife
waiting at the window,
but it’s just snowflakes
stuck to his eyelashes,
icy and thick like his lies.