Issue Twenty-Three - Winter 2014

Martha Jane Canary Tries AA

By Sara Clancy

She’s back to the bottle again,
after an early fever that gambled
away its taint on a sucker’s bet
that the bulldog at her throat
could be traded for a nice coffee

hour and the gospel of advocacy.
No easy calamity volunteers
itself on her behalf this Sunday,
it’s the rest of the affable
congregation that crowds her corner.

So tuck that remedy in your glove
and pin up your hair, girl. Your flask
and those abalone inlaid combs
are in the tin under the stairs.
From now on this epidemic should be
all sarsaparilla and Saved By Grace.

Copyright 2014 Clancy

Sara Clancy is from Philadelphia and graduated from the writer’s program at the University of Wisconsin long ago. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Madison Review, Avatar Review, Verse Wisconsin, The Smoking Poet, Untitled Country Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Owen Wister Review, Pale Horse Review, Turtle Island Quarterly and Houseboat, where she was a featured poet. She lives in the Desert Southwest with her husband, their dog and a 22-year-old goldfish named Darryl.

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