King Arthur

by Jon Bennett

The day bartenders don’t make much
but it’s not like
they could work anywhere else.
“Didn’t you move to Florida?”
I ask Arthur.
He looks loopy without his teeth in
like an aged court jester.
“I did, yeah…”
he says, polishing a glass,
“but it didn’t take.”
It doesn’t seem to bother him.
Has anything ever bothered him?
I imagine him planted in Orlando
floral shirt, Bermuda shorts,
no, it wouldn’t take,
like another knocked out tooth
I tried to push back in.

Hardhat and Harness

by Jon Bennett

All the fire trucks are out there,
the hazmat truck, two long ladders,
an ambulance and cops
the hotel over the bar caught fire again
but Frank still tends bar like a sleepy cat
“I’ll go when the water starts
coming through the ceiling,” says Frank
wringing out the bar rag.
We all go out to watch
the men in hardhat and harness
on the fire escape
break through a window
while some doofus
with a brick in his hand
gets arrested for cursing the firemen.
We are working men, for the most part
but we watch the heroes
like we've never worked
a day in our lives,
bottles to our mouths.

Qiezi

by Jon Bennett

I lie there sleepless
with an incessant hard-on
wondering, hoping.
“You’re so cranky,”
she says in the morning
as I watch her
take a birth control pill
pull off the t-shirt
and cover what I want
most in the world.
I leave
walk through Chinatown
the bustle of produce shops
the piles of qiezi
the long purple eggplant
chopped off at the stem.