Tag: Mark Williams

Tips by Mark Williams

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Tips

He thought it would be quiet in the corner,
that we could talk, away from all the talk,
the laughter, the music closer to the bar.
He knew his voice had weakened. It’s the ozone
or the pollen in the air, he said. He sipped
his beer before he spoke, but still
I had to watch his lips. They barely moved.
I leaned in close to hear.

He said they called him Beer Boy at Dade Park,
the Kentucky racetrack where he worked
the summer he was twelve. The ice
was cold against his fingers as he pulled
longnecks from the bin. Champagne Velvet,
Falls City, and Sterling cost ten cents.
When customers paid with a quarter, he would
quietly slide their change across the counter

instead of slapping it down. If he was lucky,
the trumpet would sound, calling horses
to the track and customers to the grandstands,
leaving forgotten dimes and nickels
for him to scoop across the counter
into the pocket of his apron.
My tip, he said, smiling,
as he left this story to his son.

*

Mark Williams’s poems have appeared in ONE ART: a journal of poetry, The Southern Review, New Ohio Review, Rattle, and other journals and anthologies. He is the author of the collections, Carrying On (Kelsay Books) and Life (forthcoming at Aldrich Books). His fiction has appeared in Eclectica, Cleaver, Valparaiso Fiction Review, and several Running Wild Press collections. He lives in Evansville, Indiana, with his wife, DeeGee.

Woof, Woof by Mark Williams

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Woof, Woof

I’m taking a walk in August. It’s hot.
Did you know the guy who invented the heat index
was eighty-five years old at the time?
He felt like he was ninety, three degrees shy
of what my phone reads when I hear, woof, woof.

To my left, where normally two, sometimes three
small dogs run to their fence to greet me,
I only see a swing-set and two trees. Three blocks later,
woof, woof. A kind of muffled, beagle bark. Sad-like,
as though a dog were left out in this heat. Woof, woof.

By this time, I have walked six blocks. It seems
a dog is on my trail. One night, an owl attacked me.
DeeGee patched the claw marks on my head.
Could I be hearing hoots, not woofs?
Is something spooky going on?

Who knows what is possible?
Usually, I say, Hi, Dad or Hi, Mother
when a cardinal lands on my windowsill.
I wouldn’t put this past Dad. The first time he met DeeGee,
he was wearing giant, plastic ears. Woof, woof:

knee level, to my left again. But this time,
I notice that my phone, in my left hand,
is open to an app I haven’t used in years. One that,
when you swing your arm a certain way, as in walking, say,
goes a muffled woof, woof just loud enough

to drown out a father’s laughter.

*

Mark Williams’s poems have appeared in ONE ART, The Southern Review, New Ohio Review, Rattle, and other journals and anthologies. He is the author of the poetry chapbook, Happiness, and the book of poems, Carrying On. His fiction has appeared in Eclectica, Cleaver, Valparaiso Fiction Review, and Running Wild Press anthologies. He lives in Evansville, Indiana, with his wife, DeeGee.

Gift Card by Mark Williams

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Gift Card

I’m getting into my car at Starbucks
when a man appears out of somewhere. Says
he needs to go to Evansville (where I’m going),
ten miles away from where we are. “Sorry,
I can’t take you,” I say with cowardly shame.

“I’m not asking you to take me,” he says.
And with the flash of a $25 Schnucks gift card,
he says he doesn’t need groceries,
he needs a ride, and he’ll pay for it
with the twenty-five dollars I should give to him.

“You can understand why I might be suspicious,” I say.
Flipping the card, he says, “Call this number.
You’ll see. What do you take me for anyway?”
Though I’m more inclined to believe he is taking me,
I hand him a twenty and five ones.

I’ve been hacked on Facebook at least three times.
My wife’s health insurance was billed five thousand
seven hundred dollars by a provider who hadn’t provided.
Spam Risk always calls when I’m eating.
“You owe me an apology,” he says. “You’ll see.”

Four days have passed. I haven’t called the number.
I haven’t gone to Schnucks. The card, still in my car
beside the gear shift, stares up at me as if
asking me to think the best of people.
I think I’ll leave it in my car a few more days.

*

Mark Williams’s poems have appeared in ONE ART, The Southern Review, Rattle, Nimrod, New Ohio Review, and other journals. Kelsay Books published his collection, Carrying On, in 2022. His fiction is forthcoming in BULL, Gargoyle, The Main Street Rag, and Valparaiso Fiction Review. He lives in Evansville, Indiana.

Two Poems by Mark Williams

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Scars

Thanks to successful cataract surgery, I look into my mirror
and see a sickle-shaped scar I haven’t noticed in years.
But there it is, smiling back as if to say,
I haven’t gone anywhere.

Where I go is to my yard on Lombard Street
in Evansville, Indiana, where my six-year-old buddy
Tommy Weatherby and I are tossing my model TWA Jetstream
back and forth across our shared drive. Only this time,
instead of landing in my yard, it flies into my face,
sending me past my collie, Lassie (it’s 1957,
what did you expect?), into my house, crying.

What are the odds that Tommy’s father, Jim Weatherby,
is interning at the ER down the street, where he stitches me up
and sends me on my way? What are the odds that,
after Tommy dies from Childhood Hodgkin’s Lymphoma,
Jim and June divorce, Jim leaves town, and I grow up
and get a job playing bumper pool, Ping-Pong, and Rook
at a psychiatric hospital in Nashville,
I discover Jim Weatherby is the head man?

In the eighteen months I worked there,
Jim always seemed uneasy around me—
in the elevator, the canteen. I don’t recall
him ever mentioning Tommy or June. Sometimes,
he passed me in the hall without speaking. Now I realize
that when Jim saw me, I took him back to Lombard Street
where Tommy and June stood waiting
for him to come home.

*

December

How did it get so late so soon?
It’s night before it’s afternoon.
December is here before it’s June.
My goodness how the time has flown.
How did it get so late so soon?
—Dr. Seuss

I’d been traveling out West with my father.
We’d hiked in Glacier Park, bathed in Iceberg Lake.
In a campsite near Banff, he’d shouted, “Don’t move!”
as he ran to our car for his camera
and a bear charged the rock where I sat.

We’d taken mountain climbing instructions in the Tetons,
where our classmate, Carol Lawrence (as in
West Side Story Carol Lawrence), what with her small feet,
put Dad and me to shame. We’d climbed Hallet Peak
in Rocky Mountain Park, descended on a glacier.
But Dad had a business to run in Indiana
and I had a summer to spend.

That first night, alone in Denver, I watch Joe Buck
and Ratso Rizzo on their way to Miami.
Not exactly what you want to see, a movie
about friendship when you’re alone. Next morning,
I hitchhike south to Colorado Springs. I’m offered
LSD in the Garden of the Gods (“no, thank you”)
and find a campground a few miles west, empty
but for a few men in hard hats getting into trucks.
“Just be out of here in the morning by seven,”
one man tells me, pointing to a nearby rock face.
“We’re blasting a road through here.”

I don’t sleep well.

The next morning, just after seven, I’m walking
down a gravel road that leads to the highway—
on my way to Buena Vista
to apply for a job at a youth camp—
when at my back, an explosion,
and fifty-two years pass by.

*

Mark Williams’s poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Nimrod, Rattle, New Ohio Review, and elsewhere. Kelsay Books published his collection, Carrying On, in 2022. His fiction has appeared in Eclectica, The First Line, The Write Launch, and Cleaver. He lives in Evansville, Indiana.