The epigraph for Don Winter’s No Way Out But In, by Linda McCarriston, sets up a conundrum: “And still the impulse is to create an art that denies the existence not only of an underclass, but the human experience of living a life entrapped in it.” It’s an apt epigraph, as the denial McCarriston targets is what Winter works against. The underclass inhabits Winter’s work. Its entrapment, economic and otherwise, is clearly and forcefully rendered, poem after poem.
Buffing
I buffed a floor
at Wanda’s Grill and the buffer hit
a slick spot, went gazooming like a kid
spinning to be dizzy and kicked
my balls. But no, I squealed like a hog,
oh goddamn but no. All boss did
was put ice down there real fast
to get the heat out.
He said I might be a eunuch
in at least my right nut
and don’t forget to fill out
this accident report. After work,I went to Tintop Tavern
and said to my girl,
Here sit in my lap.
Nothing would go down nor come up.
She couldn’t make it, neither.Someday right soon, she said,
there’s just gonna be
a lil’ piece of your ass left.
She was drunk as a hoot owl.
Pabst on tap.
Your mouth’s runnin’
like a whippoorwill’s ass
in chokecherry season.
I picked a cue
and leaned. The eight ball wobbled
like a thrown wheel
and scratched.
The poems’ dark humor and weariness create a singular emotion–one in which a laugh and a sigh combine.
Late Shift Waitress at Wanda’s Grill
Nights at this place
I yell orders to a short order
cook five feet away, to his beefy
tattoo blurred by the years to maybe
some woman’s name, or maybe the name of a ship
which went down. I learn to appreciate
the customers who answer What are you having?
with Another one of those nights.
I mechanically recite the list of everything I’m out of
and feel it’s not much
compared with the litany of going and gone
I sing softly back
to the radio. The local color here
is blue: blue plate special, an entire row
of songs on the jukebox, my blue-streak
chatter on the phone,
fingering the dark blue bruise on my neck.
No matter how many times I rehearse,
I’ll never be able to say,
No more. Don’t wait up. Won’t be back, ever.
Words like the thunk
of a car meeting something alive in the road.
At break, I look down at the plate of bacon and eggs
made up like a face,
growing colder by the minute.
Guess I’m not very hungry after all.
Whatever hunger brought me here
in the first place, whatever I wanted
so badly I could taste it,
somehow became the cockeyed wisdom
in those Have-a-hank handkerchiefs
behind the counter, in the measured
doses of bromo hanging over the cartoon
outline of a woman with all the fizz
knocked out of her. All here for the sadness
and the burning
and the neon promise spelled out: WE NEVER CLOSE.
I came across Winter’s work in the latest issue of Nerve Cowboy. No Way Out But In is published by Dan Sheridan’s Working Stiff Press in a no-frills edition of 8.5” x 11” sheets stapled and duct taped for binding. For more on Winter and his work, visit his homepage here.