Median
The tales Pop told
come back to me sometimes
like the one about his pal John
who lost his hair
when he stuck his finger into a socket
but now I know he fell asleep
on the couch smoking a cigarette
and the whole thing erupted in flames
and for a long time after
he had to wear
one of those compression suits
to keep all his skin from falling off.
Pop was funny like that
given to myth-making.
I couldn’t always tell
how much of what he said
he believed.
He didn’t drink
but occasionally when I went to visit
there’d be a bottle of Woodford Reserve
well preserved
in the otherwise barren refrigerator
and he’d say a friend who visited left it.
Years later a tractor-trailer ran that friend over
while he was wandering
down the center lane of Sunrise Highway.
That one is true. It was in the papers. You can read all about it.
Isn’t that proof enough?
*
Brian Dolan is a poet and fiction writer based in Brooklyn, NY. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the Bangalore Review, the Bosphorus Review of Books, Plum Tree Tavern, the Beatnik Cowboy, and New Verse News.
