A Can of Beer

By: William Miller

Sober ten years, my grandmother

 “got right with the Lord, though she still talked

about her drinking days:  the all-night bars

by the railroad tracks, soldiers home

from the war.

Of course she got fired from jobs

and once was arrested for public drunkenness

on First Avenue.  But those things happened.

The sober life, she said, was boring—

safe but boring—cooking, cleaning

with her daughter, watching the “stories,”

soap operas in the afternoon. 

They loved her at the Church of Christ,

a reformed sinner they treated like

a dancing bear, made her “testify”

at revivals.  One afternoon, alone

at my aunt’s house, she said out

of the deep blue, “A can of cold beer

would taste good right now”.

And it wasn’t an idle thought, a dark candle

burned inside her, lit by her own hand.

But the moment passed, the flame burned out,

though I offered to buy her one she could

drink from a paper sack.  I wanted to see

the crazy woman from my childhood—

loud, cursing, prone to fall and fall again.

She slept with a .38 under her pillow,

fully loaded.  That woman was still

in there—not saved by invisible angels--

somehow still alive. 

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William Miller's eighth collection of poetry, The Crow Flew Between Us, was published by Kelsay Books in 2020. His poems have appeared in The Penn Review, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, and West Branch. He lives and writes in the French Quarter of New Orleans.