Addiction as Ecotone - Part 11 - Karen Weyant

The Bartender Dreams of White Moths - Karen Weyant
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Of flutters pounding in her ears, tissue wings
snagging on loose wires of screen doors, burnt
crisp on streetlights, bent backwards around
the antennae of a car. She wakes up sweating,
thinking of bar napkins tearing on cans of beer,
bar stools, the heels of work boots heavy
with dust. One regular always sports jeans
stained with white paint, another wears
the wings of sweat stains under his arms.
Smoke rests in her mouth, coats her throat,
splits her skin. The jukebox echoes, Garth Brooks
scraping her hips, pinching her thighs.
She remembers all the last calls slipping
through the back door, hoping the night
insects grasping the screen will fly away.
They only cling tighter.

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Karen J. Weyant, a 2007 NYFA Fellow in poetry, teaches at Jamestown Community College
in Jamestown, New York. Her recent poems have been published in Slipstream, The Comstock
Review, Anti- and the minnesota review.