four poems
by Mike McHone
Murder
they found him on the floor of his apartment
so much blood around him the cops thought
he’d been killed, when a burst ulcer did him in.
he’d thrown up for an hour, the coroner said
fell, hit his head, bled out, and died. forty years
of drinking, night after night, to his very last day.
a dedication rarely seen in anything anymore.
beer, vodka, bourbon, wine. it didn’t matter.
“anything booze will do,” was his go-to line at
the bar, the liquor store, parties, anywhere.
he was a lawyer, the obituary said. he never said
it though. he definitely didn’t look like one. rumpled
clothes, hair that looked like it was combed with a cake
mixer, a five o’clock shadow that put in overtime.
he only spoke of his next drink and the bartender’s ass
and how the tiger’s fucked up their chances of making
the world series again. nothing else
everything with him was always on the surface, the fizz
in glass of jack and coke. the salt on the rim. he never
asked about someone’s home life, kids, family, dreams
etc. just what they were drinking. what he was drinking.
the old barrister never revealed any depth. odd to think
the only bar he ever passed was the one he never spoke about.
just drinks, that curvy ass, how shitty the home team was. but
there had to be something under those wrinkled shirts and eyes.
if there was we’ll never know. and how can you defend that?
maybe the cops weren’t wrong. it just took forty years for the
murder to happen, and the killer’s still on the loose.
The First Time We Watched Alien
I knew the story. I’d seen it, Christ, how many times?
She, on the couch beside me, never seen it before. Yaphet Kotto and Veronica Cartwright dead on the ground. Sigourney Weaver with her cat, running to the escape pod, the last ones to survive.
“Nothing better happen to the cat,” she says. “Tell me the cat’ll be okay.”
“The cat makes it.” “But what about her?”
“You have to watch.” “She’d better not die. I’ll be mad.”
I’ve watched this thing since the early 80s and she always gets away, gets safely in the escape pod, the spaceship, miles behind her, exploding in vibrant light. She always makes it. She’s always okay.
Well yes, the alien does sneak onto the pod, and yes, she nearly dies again, but, yes, she survives, as she always survives.
But what if she doesn’t this time? some weird, intrusive part of me asks. What if it kills and eats her? What if the alien changes the story and ruins it?
Ruins it for who? Me, Sigourney Weaver, or my new girlfriend?
Odd word. Girlfriend. A “girlfriend” is what you have when you’re an adolescent, a teenager, or in your 20s, even 30s, not your 40s or beyond.
At this point it should be “wife” or, at the very least, “fiancé” (but something unexpected always came along, out of nowhere, right when things were going good, when things were normal).
Sigourney blows the alien out of the airlock and she and her cat live happily ever after.
“You said there’s a sequel?” she asks.
Isn’t there always?
Coffee
there was a crust caked
at the corner of my eye
for a good part of the morning
I wiped it away and stopped thinking
about how your eyes looked
like marbles
and that sound in the back
of your throat as I tried to kiss you
awake while you were there
on the basement floor
something like
the gargle of mouthwash before
the spit, or a coffee maker
while the birds sing up the sun
Christ
that funeral home
had the worst coffee
but you wouldn’t know. you
never drank the stuff
neither did I
before mom remarried
four months later and we each
had to build a new home
Sunday
Apples
and the time my friend and I threw some off an overpass
at midnight when we were in high school, the sound of them
striking the top of semitrailers, little claps of thunder below us.
Bananas
and the pot-prodded confession Josh Peterson gave at a party
at my cousin’s house. “I shoved one in my ass when I jerked off
a couple years ago.”
Brazil nuts
and the time when I was six and went with my grandfather
to the market and he leaned close to my ear, the whiskey thick
on his breath, and pointed a yellow finger at a barrel and said,
“Ya know what we used ta call them?”
Pepsi
and that day my dad got mad for some fucking reason and threw
a can of it across the dining room.
Fabric cleaner
and the time she woke with blood soaked through her underwear
and sheets, and the doctor said it was an ectopic pregnancy, and I
spent the afternoon scrubbing our kid out of the mattress.
Dish soap
and the smell of my grandmother’s house, and the ham she cooked
at Easter, the turkey at Thanksgiving and the cakes for birthday after
birthday.
Mouthwash
and the guy I shared a cubical with, whose breath smelled as if he
gave head to piles of literal shit every morning before he came to work.
The impulse items
and the gum and the candy and the chocolate bars and the peanuts and
the jelly beans and the tabloids and the crossword puzzles and how
so many people I’ve ever known are now dead from heart attacks and
stroke and diabetes and drinking and overdoses and old age
and suicide.
The checkout
and the curvy brunette who doesn’t know I’m in love with her.
She, going about her day, her life, me waiting to pay whatever price
she gives me, so I can come back next week and live my secret life
out in the open all over again.
The mechanical horse
and the little girl with more dreams caught in the spaces between her
baby teeth than I ever had in my head, my life or soul.
The parking lot
and the rest of everything.
Photo of Mike McHone
BIO: Mike McHone's work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, an Anthony Award, and a Best of the Net Award. As a Derringer Award winner, his fiction, prose, poetry, essays and humor pieces have appeared in such places as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Playboy, the AV Club, Rock and a Hard Place, Dark Yonder, and elsewhere. He currently lives in Detroit.