Smoke

A few lines in support of the proposition that a little whiskey never hurt a poem.

This poem was originally performed January 1, 2013, for the Tuesday Funk Reading Series. It was later published in The Piltdown Review.

Photo licensed from Bigstock.

I make it my general practice
    not to drink and write.
At least, I try not to drink
    when writing fiction,
where the prose should be clear
    and lucid as water,
even as it refracts the light.

But poetry's a different matter.
    A little whisky never
hurt a poem. Not much, anyway.
    Certainly not this
glass of it, distilled from smoke
    that might have
scribbled words like these in
    the air as it
jittered away, leaving only this
    amber residue,
not so transparent as it appears. ∅