My Lover Drinks
My lover sits at the kitchen table drinking bourbon from a coffee cup. He says it’s for the rheumatism, but I know better. It’s for the slow buzz, the echoing high of alcohol in an empty room. He’s not a mean drunk. He hugs and says the most maudlin things. In the morning, his hands shake and he drinks peppermint schnapps. All day he works and comes home sick with want. He lights a cigarette and pours himself a drink. He seldom eats. “Food is a shock to the system,” he says. I don’t know how he lives, but he lives on and on. I kiss his balding head and wait for him to come to bed. He comes and we make love in the heated room. He takes me places when he’s drunk that I’ve never been. I love him more now that he’s grown so affectionate. When he touches me, I grow warm as fresh bread. I rise up and fold myself around him. When he sleeps, I watch his face and wait for the day it will no longer be there. Nothing this good lasts long.
My Mother Working
She’s a little woman.
She’s little and brown as walnut juice,
wrinkled and tired looking.
She smokes Pall Mall cigarettes
and drinks beer with tomato juice.
She lives on her feet and they swell
and hurt. Her feet and her hands
make her living. She tries to smile
but her smile’s hard as an agate.
Thin lips over yellow, plastic teeth.
You can say anything, she says.
If you say it with a smile.
She’s wrong. Some things are best unsaid.
William L. Alton was born November 5, 1969 and started writing in the Eighties while incarcerated in a psychiatric prison. Since then his work has appeared in Main Channel Voices, World Audience and Breadcrumb Scabs among others. In 2010, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He has published one book titled Heroes of Silence. He earned both his BA and MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon where he continues to live. You can find him at williamlalton.com.