J.S. Absher

First Drink

21 September 1939

At dusk, Daddy sends me to Dancy’s 
for baking soda and snuff for Granny. 
Means coming home alone in the dark. 
Singing’s a brave maker, so my voice 
is waking the roosting birds 
when I notice a shadowy man 
coming my way. I stop singing. 
He steps into the moonlight. 

Unsteady on his feet, Wingler 
sits down in the road flat on his rear, 
legs out forming a V. He’s wearing 
new overalls, a white shirt, and his Sunday 
blue serge coat. He pulls a fruit jar 
from his pocket, unscrews the zinc lid, 
turns it up, takes a big swallow, smacks 
his lips, then sets the jar between his feet.
 
Drink all you want. Ain’t fit for nothing else. 
It burns going down and my eyes water, 
but I say, Damn good corn. I’ll turn 13 
soon, Mama’s just home from the asylum, 
her hair cut close like a man’s. She’s not
how I remember. But the night is glowing. 
I float home on a bubble, singing.

J.S. Absher has published two full-length books of poetry, Skating Rough Ground (Kelsay Press, 2022) and Mouth Work (St. Andrews University Press), winner of the 2015 Lena Shull Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society. Absher’s poems have won prizes from BYU Studies Quarterly and Dialogue and have recently been published or accepted by The McNeese Review, Triggerfish Critical Review, and Tar River Review. He lives in Raleigh, NC, with his wife, Patti. (www.jsabsherpoetry.com/)