Aubade By Manny Grimaldi

Never enough drinks in me, not quite

what I want, still sober when I start;

and today, this is the day I wake

and begin anew, my head whisked

to the refrigerator by wheelbarrow

where a Black Russian waits for breakfast.

It’s not a good idea this morning, 

and the avocado wall telephone rings,

sawing and splitting my ears like logs.

Time to hide in the barn, someone’s

coming for me, the mail not checked

in weeks, and the glancing, pierces, rays

through the blinds—I drop my only drink,

and begin to weep to face anything 

so unpromising, like when my father took

me aside sweet seventeen hounding

with the words I’d ruined everything;

when that little girl Kay had full measure

of my smothering and said goodbye;

and when it dawned my rage had the cart

before the horse, I whimpered and drove

the car by a drive thru liquor store,

and talked to a bottle for five hours.

Until noon.

Manny Grimaldi is a Louisville, Kentucky poet, a spit and a cough just west of the "bourbon trail".  He is the managing editor for the poetry journal Yearling out of Lexington, Kentucky.  Years ago, his drinking got arrested and thrown in jail, and occasionally Manny has marched on its behalf.  Manny is also a clown.  Personally, and by training.