This Is Where Some Things Are Kept

Joseph drinks on Wednesdays,
plays spades of gratitude for rum,
his jars, her syringe:
a genie in his world,
a wishbone in the next.

Nothing's once,
a morning when she played in the liquor cabinet

Steady, writing ‘cross her page,
outside like a gypsy-sage waitress,
American doors,
bumming Marlboros

Fur canines slurred her words,
Joseph in a run-down, pinstriped suit,
her mouth a broken conch.