Drowning
It’s during the day when they come.
They shuffle in before noon
and sit in the dark corners of the bar
drinking beer and rye.
They rarely talk,
except to shout at remembered faces
of people they loved
and drove away.
I’m witness to these moments of pain,
and hope that I never grow old and alone.
I’m helping them kill themselves.
It takes a long time, but the poison will eventually work,
and there are always others to fill these empty seats.
Writing on Napkins
Writing on napkins
and scrapes of paper
make me feel inspired.
Little treasures of thoughts and words
forgotten on cluttered tables.
I came on them seldomly
as a waiter searching for my own muse
(in the off hours before sunrise),
and I wondered what it could mean
to find such scattered messages:
a list,
a request for rendezvous,
an expression of joy
or sorrow,
and sometimes a poem –
scribbled and discarded,
left behind by a vagabond artist,
left behind to be read and loved by me.
Kenneth D. Reimer lives on the Canadian Great Plains with his wife, Lisa, and a cat named Nazca who likes to bite him on the leg. His favourite art form is the short story, but occasionally he takes on the challenge of longer fiction ranging from novellas to novels. He has had short works published in a variety of magazines and anthologies including The NightWriter Review, Four Tulips, The Saint Katherine Review, The Brussels Review, and Scribeworth Magazine. Zero Time, his novel of time travel, is available on Amazon. Samples of his other writing can be viewed at KennethDReimer.com.
THE CITY KEY 