Don Winter

From 1999-2008, Don Winter’s poems appeared in most small press (and many “academic” press) journals. Small Press Review called him “One of the best poets in [the] small press.” Working Stiff Press released Saturday Night Desperate: A Retrospective, 1999-2008, in August 2009.

Links to Don Winter's Website & Books:

 www.nyqpoets.net/poet/donwinter

www.donwinterpoetrybooksonline.com

Lonesome Town  

“Andy stole my cherry                                                                           

on a toothpick

& swallowed it whole,”

she sd. I was out

of the army a couple weeks,

madly in lust. “Now Andy’s gone,

no one can say where,

otherwise I wouldn’t be dancing

in this shithole.” She smelled

like a dogpound in August, but

she had a wad of bills

the size of a sandwich. Had a snake

tattooed around her ankle,

pierced nipple & that edgy, unreachable

disinterest I couldn’t

get enough of. 

Two hundred for the night, two bones

from her dealer later, we jumped

into a Checker cab.

Back in my room,

The dope dropped my head

Like a tulip.

She cleaned me out.

“Ants,” she sd.

next day at the club,

“people are ants,”

lifted her feet & stomped

them down. Next morning, I started begging

my way back to my folk’s house

in Bumfuck, USA.

Working Late

Squared in his spot on line six,

he chalks a number

on the board, locks the chuck.

Fronds curl against his hands

and arms. He keeps nodding off,

even though the roof kicks with rain

and wind turns

on itself in the empty truck docks.

Each piece he lifts

is heavier than the last.

He cleans the finished ones

in the oil soup.

He turns the heat off, sips black coffee,

remembers the guy on graveyard

fell asleep for a moment and woke

to his finger lying on the cement.

The Cashier at Hinky Dinky’s Discovers Jesus

You tell me when she found him.

It came sudden like a slammed door. A tent

of blond hair and two eyes of alien

blue, and a mouth that gospelled

us and the customers. She drove us

to church flapping her jaws

about forgiveness. She sized Jesus talk

to fit our sins. Jesus this.

The disciples of Jesus that.

And prophecy. Frogs and snakes

and blood letting blahblahblah.

We sang songs about

hallelujah, and shooing our past

sins like flies,

and one where you jumped

up and down for Jesus.

She left scraps of scripture

in every nook and cranny of Hinky Dinky’s,

in cash drawers and cookie jars and cupboards,

even in a Bible

we swore would explode,

until one day

geewhillikers her heart did.

The good in us ran downhill.

We all stood around at Tintop Tavern, 

drinking beer, pushing one another

and cussing.

Us back to good for nothings, wrong

since Genesis.

At the Tavern

a man slips

into his seat

with a sigh

like an accordion

folding into its case

Two Theories

There’s a light at the end of the tunnel,

he said.

It’s us going up in flames,

she said.