Dear Reader,
There’s something quite magical in watching the world pass by from a bar stool as you nurse a cold beer in the humid heat of summer. Like an oasis in the desert, the bar serves as a necessary reprieve from the heat, and the cold amber gold, all wet with sweat, seems to banish all lingering echos of heat clinging to your skin. It is at once an act of contemplation and protest, a refusal to give in to the constant movement of doing and denial of those elemental forces working away at one’s soul. This poem, written in a quiet pub around the corner from my house, tries its best to evoke that magic and, in turn, hopes to create a wandering pub of poetry where weary readers, can sit, drink, and watch the world pass by.
-Ryan
COZY CORNER
Sitting at a city bar
w/ ragtime rolling overhead.
The faint scent of summer
drifting through the doors.
Staring down this sweaty bottle
of import beer—
budding, beaded droplets
daring me to drink.