J.W. Goll
John Barleycorn
Cheap bourbon half empty on the counter,
a warm icebox with Budweiser and Coke,
a dozen empty wine bottles used as candle holders and vases,
seven dollars on the table, a lumpy, colorless couch,
my best fifteen minutes, over and over in this furnace
that is America’s heart, none of which was my plan,
so thank god there’s still half a bottle left.
J.W. Goll is a writer and artist whose stories and poems are informed by experiences as a photographer in Chicago, the Dakotas, and Central Europe, any of which he would gladly return to if only they’d let him back in.