‘What Do You Do When You No Longer Drink’ and Other Poetry by Geoffrey Smagacz

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What Do You Do When You
No Longer Drink

What do you do when you no longer drink,
no tossing out the empties in a bag
as one by one you hear that cautious clink
then wipe end tables with a beer-soaked rag?
Face reality? No, not right away.
How about starting with a hearty meal?
I think I can get eggs and toast to stay
without my stomach’s violent repeal.
But after that I need to reassess.
For crying out loud, what do the sparrows do
when facing ordinary woodland stress?
Find month-old fermented berries to chew?
In twenty-four hours it will be clearer.
Then I can call myself a perseverer.

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Though I Might Memorize My Lines

Though I might memorize my lines, I doubt
that I, before an audience of one,
could, like a panicked actor, get them out
truly, despite the all-day-long dry run.
Too much rehearsal makes words insincere.
And there’s one other thing—I’m not an actor;
I don’t possess the skills to make them clear.
Add fear of failure as another factor.
Oh, that Shakespearean notion that she’d read
from twinges on my face and blinkless eyes
of that which my own tongue will not accede—
at least I think that’s what my look implies:
that I’m, well I’m—I think that I’m in love.
How can I take the stage without a shove?

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An Autumn Flower

An autumn flower no one will ever pick,
not visible from any walking trail,
not beautified by fancy rhetoric,
but plain, burnt orange, wind pliant but not frail,
without an odor to the human nose
but one the bee and beetle can detect
even in its last hour, I presuppose,
before it’s felled by frost, before it’s wrecked,
and not a flower that one could hold in mind—
that is the vexing quandary that I’m in.
It’s not a flower that one could ever find;
it’s never died because it’s never been.
I merely make an allegoric guess
that one like it lives in the wilderness.

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Geoffrey Smagacz writes from Mexico (mostly) and South Carolina. His poetry has been published in various literary magazines and e-zines, including 14 by 14, Dappled Things and the Society of Classical Poets.  His latest murder mystery, Reportedly Murdered (Wipf and Stock, 2022), is now available through online venues. A collection of his fiction, published under the title of A Waste of Shame and Other Sad Tales of the Appalachian Foothills (Wiseblood Books, 2013), won the 2014 Independent Publisher gold medal for Best Mid-Atlantic Regional Fiction. www.geoffreysmagacz.com, @Ge0ffreyW on Twitter.