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Ode #2 to Dive Bar City

Kenneth DiMaggio

Behind the mahogany bar-top counter:
—a baseball bat
—a secret hole to hide
the night’s growing stash
—and a box filled with the lost
but seldom found

Did one of the men
who finished an 8-hour
shift feeding fire into one
of this city’s smokestacks lose
a glass eye or an artificial leg?

—war medals
—grammar school pictures
of the kids before the divorce
—a Boy Scout knife or rosary
you promised to carry for
the rest of your life

A pinky-finger size cannister
of lips stick
—a wrapped & still ready-to-use
Tampon
—a small notebook with the names
& numbers of men that one lady
had been playing for the last decade
(these old time bars haven’t been
the same since it became legal
to let the ladies in)

Few ever claimed what they
lost at Eddie’s Bowl-A-Rama or
The Vesuvius Lounge & Banquet Hall

But after a certain age and number
of drinks

it was more honest to live
wounded and incomplete

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