I'm sitting here listening to Old Crow Medicine Show and reading poems while Eric works out downstairs. I love poems because I could probably never pull one off. I've also been into the sound of old-time country these days. Yep, even spinning Hank Williams. AND I took a blurry picture of a pinball machine today. So, for all of the above reasons, I loved this poem when I ran into it.
Writing On Napkins At The Sunshine Club; Macon, Georgia 1970
by David Bottoms
The Rock-O-La plays Country and Western
three for a quarter and nothing recorded since 1950.
A man with a heart
tattoo had a five dollar thing for Hank and Roy,
over and over the same tunes
till someone at the bar asked to hear a woman's voice.
All night long I've been sitting in this booth
watching beehives and tight skirts,
gold earrings glowing and fading in the turning light
of a Pabst Blue Ribbon sign,
beer guts going purple and yellow and orange
around the Big Red Man pinball machine.
All night a platinum blonde has brought beer to the table,
asked if I'm writing love letters on the folded napkins,
and I've been unable to answer her
or find any true words to set down on the wrinkled paper.
What needs to be written is caught already
in Hank's lonesome wail,
the tattooed arm of the man who's all quarters,
the hollow ring and click of the tilted Red Man,
even the low belch of the brunette behind the flippers.
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