Richard Weaver
The Pint glasses refuse to wash themselves
in open defiance to those who handle them, a resounding break with tradition, not that
they give a fillip. It's the pandemic inefficiency that stains their annealed existence.
The unsightly splotches that blot the future. Management's convenient blindness to
sanitary needs. A willful lack of efficiency. The bar glasses are not amused. They refuse
the calloused hands of handlers. They throw themselves off trays willy-nilly. In moments
of controlled madness, they fling their restaurant quality selves against brick walls but
never near a paying patron, or waitroid. Each one has their limit and approved targets.
None see dishwater as ablution or soapy baptism. All are adamant that the wretched
water and wailing baby should be thrown out, preferably into ongoing traffic, although
this point is negotiable, at least with the baby.
Bio
Post-Covid, the author has returned as the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub. Among his other pubs: conjunctions, Louisville Review, Southern Quarterly, Free State Review, Hollins Critic, Misfit Magazine, Loch Raven Review, The Avenue, New Orleans Review, & SOI. He's the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992), and wrote the libretto for a symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005). He was a finalist in the 2019 Dogwood Literary Prize in Poetry. His 195th Prose poem was recently published since 2016.