Shuffling and cutting the deck, he fumbles,
his fingers laggards, each follow-through
a synaptic aberration, his hit you? more
like hoodoo, his I raise like whoosh,
his call like auk, consonants not being
negotiable, vowels as soft as snowflakes.
Despite the drool worming its way
down the right side of his chin
and the upper lip tugging his mouth up
to a crooked smile, his eyes dance,
light and airy, and sparked by the slap
of aces on the kitchen table, at the way
they obliterate eights, his laugh erupts,
a flood of gurgles, and he reaches out,
maneuvering two piles of pennies into one.
George Drew is the author of The View from Jackass Hill, 2010 winner of the X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, Texas Review Press, which also has just published his chapbook, Down & Dirty (2015), and will publish his New & Selected, Pastoral Habits, in Jan/ Feb 2016. His sixth collection, Fancy’s Orphan, is due out in January 2017, from Tiger Bark Press. He is the winner of the 2014 St. Petersburg Review poetry contest. Originally from Mississippi, he lives in upstate New York.
