Devouring Five Bottles...

By Julie Allyn Johnson

Devouring five bottles of malt duck and a bag of lay’s potato chips

with the godfather on a night of pouring rain in late October

would love to say i’ve been stood up
but that would imply there being

an existent someone in my life

there is not

never will be
that old maid moniker —
or thornback, if i’m to be precise —

mocks me from every mirror
just gave it away
cosmo-hype buy-in
cracked-spine paperback
our bodies, ourselves...

lip-synching with gloria
i will survive
fleeting feel-good vibes
something not once sustained

i never go to weddings anymore
who wants to see all that kissing & hugging
those happy faces beaming with joy

yuck

not me

give me vito or clemenza
barzini or sollozzo
any day of the week

hell

i’ll settle for that bloody horse
under those 60-dollar sandstone
silk sheets & matching comforter
where every 80’s it girl should sleep

Julie Allyn Johnson, a sawyer's daughter from the American Midwest, began writing poetry after her retirement from IT work in 2017. She loves hiking, gravel-travel photography, riding bikes, altered books and collage, reading and writing poetry and exploring trails in the Rocky Mountains. Her work has been (or soon will be) published in Lyrical Iowa, Typishly, The Esthetic Apostle, Chestnut Review, SPLASH!, The Loch Raven Review, Better Than Starbucks, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Into the Void, Poetry and Covid, Phantom Kangaroo, Haikuniverse, The Disappointed Housewife, Coffin Bell, Anti-Heroin Chic, Kitchen Sink Magazine, Space and Time Magazine and The Briar Cliff Review.

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