Old soldiers line up at Dave’s downtown,
buy newspapers, scratch tickets,
and play their Keno numbers.
Theirs are the silent footsteps
not drawn by the smell of bus-diesel,
but to spend another morning
with head-shaking headlines
and luck as forbidding as enemy planes.
While others rush to the job,
they take their time
just in case it’s not the surly Dave’s cashier
who’s there to take their money
but that losing lottery number…death.
It’s a warm day already.
There’s no wind.
The air is thick as the soup
their wives serve up
night after night.
Dave’s is air-conditioned at least.
And there’s a table at the back
where they can curse politicians,
their fortune, their knee-joints
and the threadbare thanks
they got for having served.
No point bringing up the good in their lives.
Morning is not the time.
Dave’s could never be the place.
John Grey is an Australian poet and US resident. He was recently published in New Plains Review, Stillwater Review and Big Muddy Review with work upcoming in Louisiana Review, Columbia College Literary Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review.
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THE CITY KEY 