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The pisser in the bar was branded:
American Standard.
I shook and moped back out
into the dim, dingy dive,
the air cool and somehow overly wet,
and ordered a double.
Donny Trump was up on the tv,
looking all jack-o’-lantern orange,
mouth pursed then streaming,
pursed then streaming
like an anus.
The bourbon came and I downed it.
I told the barkeep that the pisser was right,
that this was the new American Standard.
She turned to the tv and I shook my head.
“Wrong one,” I told her.
She gave me that look,
the one all wary barkeeps give,
the one that says,
“Tread easy, mister.”
I ordered another, paid my tab and left.
The streets were overly wet,
shining in the first rays of a burgeoning day,
a sickly yellow sheen covering it all,
humidity already
making everything
stale
piss sticky;
American Standard all the way.
A.S. Coomer is a writer. He likes cats, tacos, books & comics. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in issues of Red Fez, Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Literary Orphans Journal, The Quill, Blotterature, GFT Press, Flash Fiction Magazine, Oxford Magazine, Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review, Heater, The Broadkill Review, Degenerate Literature, The Merida Review, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, Thirteen Myna Birds, 101 Words, Intrinsick Magazine and Serving House Journal. He also runs a “record label” for poetry.
