Shakin’

My brother built a table
from junk boards and scraps.
Low and wide,
sanded smooth
and glossed thick with varnish.
It was good for cocktails and ash trays,
Laker games and onion dip.
We lived together for a time,
young and aimless.
There were parties
lit by strings
of colored lights.
There was music,
reverb, echo and delay
drumbeats
rattling the walls
and up on the table,
wet and sticky
from spilled drinks,
girls
in their bare feet
crowded together
five at a time.
Shot-loose and shakin’
they would twist and grind
the old boards flexing
varnish cracking.
There were clumsy hook-ups
and ecstasy
under a cosmos of purple and red,
and for a few short years
there was magic
to carry us through
our blue lives.
From junk boards and scraps
my brother built a table.

Curtis Hayes has worked in sawmills, greasy spoons, and as a grip, gaffer, and set builder in film production. He’s been a truck driver, a boat rigger, a print journalist and a screenwriter. His poetry has been featured in numerous small press journals and anthologies. A new split collection with Don Winter, has just been released by Working Stiff Press.