James Kangas
Whiskey
He was like an animal I couldn’t help
but stalk, his eyes glittering black
diamonds cut precisely to maximize
dazzle and pierce. He was like a god
in a high-intensity novel, an only-
to-be-dreamed-of apollo so ravishing
he made the hair stand on my arms and
as he moved through that bar like some
all-powerful gazelle near the edge of a
herd on a green plain in Africa, having
spied at a little distance a not-so-fast
and quivering lion fixed on him alone,
he began to psych my stance, began to
think he’d like to play hunter, wreak
just a bit of romp-in-the-grass havoc,
let a little blood on the carpet of the
veldt so that the air might waft that
exhilarating odor to his bored nostrils.
It became sort of a dance, a lambada
replete with body slams to my hapless
neurons, and plainly he had the steps
and a well of energy to hoof us through
a weeks-long fever fueled by an 80 proof
fire in his bloodstream, and desire and
terror in mine. It came (as he washed
down my lamb fricassee, my despair with
a tumbler of whiskey) to such a pitch
my sad kitchen ended up all shattered
glass before I ushered him out of my
life. It became so frenzied the only
degree I can liken it to was
the night
I sat in the back seat of the car with
my brother of the stiff upper lip, with
the Forest Highway winding like a huge
black snake through some god-forsaken
inky thicket, my parents in the front
having one lovely row, my father soused,
my mother chastising him for his wowser
toot with my uncle, the car tearing two-
wheels and faster down the S’s of that
snake, the sobs heaving quick like final
labor from my mother, from me, the trees
stepping close in the high beams’ sweep,
the gas pedal to the floor he was so
pissed, his eyes glittering in the rear
view mirror, the speedometer past 90,
this nuclear family in a rusting jalopy
hurtling like bloody hell into the night
I prayed towards a far world without him
or any other deep-eyed vile terrorist
bastard, I would never let another near
the brown jug of my heart, I don’t care
how overflowing it was, how it begged me
to serve him.
“Whiskey” was first published in Wilde Oaks, Winter 1993
James Kangas is a retired librarian and musician living in Flint, Michigan. His poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Faultline, The New York Quarterly, The Penn Review, West Branch, et al. His chapbook, Breath of Eden (Sibling Rivalry Press), was published in 2019.
