Mastering Fine Accidents
Mastering Fine Accidents
Short guy in a dirty blue down jacket, late 50s
wild blue-gray hair, holding a plastic bag in the elevator
He was mostly blocked from me, but I could see
he had something heavy
I needed a beer, so I asked
He came around and told me to go ahead
He had a bag full of loose beers
“Thanks.”
“Wash it,” he said. “It came out of the garbage.”
“Where?”
Long silence.
“You’re not telling me. It’s alright.”
I got off the elevator
He said after me: “Pelham’s.”
I rode my bike down to Pelham’s
and found a big green dumpster full
of empty bottles and hefty bags full of bottles
mostly empty
and a lot of them were broken
and there was brown water at the bottom
of one end of the dumpster
air sour like rotting fruit and vinegar,
as well as like a dumpster
The light was fading, so I propped open the top lids
and slid open the side doors
It was dark in there
All I saw were empties and broken glass,
piled three feet high
I picked through the bottles for
ten minutes and didn’t find anything
thirst versus fears about getting cut
Tom arrived and leaned into the other side,
opposite me
He had a small flashlight
He found a bottle of Sierra Nevada in less than one minute
He gave it to me
I found a Smirnoff ice in the dark
I would find three of these and, with his help and flashlight, a
Stella Artois
He found six beers and a Smirnoff,
including a Red Stripe he divined
beneath and through a pile of shattered empties
He gave me some of his beer
He insisted
We searched for an hour and then talked
He had discovered the booze earlier in the day
when he had walked up to the dumpster
to throw away a soda bottle
he saw a bottle of whiskey
He finished it off
Then he saw an unopened beer
Beautiful women dressed for the town
walked past us tramps, women who
talked to me
who i had something
to say to
when i had a career
before i shattered myself
against the thing
I was supposed to live in
I wanted to get back to the hotel
before my beer
got any more outdated
Short guy in a dirty blue down jacket, late 50s
wild blue-gray hair, holding a plastic bag in the elevator
He was mostly blocked from me, but I could see
he had something heavy
I needed a beer, so I asked
He came around and told me to go ahead
He had a bag full of loose beers
“Thanks.”
“Wash it,” he said. “It came out of the garbage.”
“Where?”
Long silence.
“You’re not telling me. It’s alright.”
I got off the elevator
He said after me: “Pelham’s.”
I rode my bike down to Pelham’s
and found a big green dumpster full
of empty bottles and hefty bags full of bottles
mostly empty
and a lot of them were broken
and there was brown water at the bottom
of one end of the dumpster
air sour like rotting fruit and vinegar,
as well as like a dumpster
The light was fading, so I propped open the top lids
and slid open the side doors
It was dark in there
All I saw were empties and broken glass,
piled three feet high
I picked through the bottles for
ten minutes and didn’t find anything
thirst versus fears about getting cut
Tom arrived and leaned into the other side,
opposite me
He had a small flashlight
He found a bottle of Sierra Nevada in less than one minute
He gave it to me
I found a Smirnoff ice in the dark
I would find three of these and, with his help and flashlight, a
Stella Artois
He found six beers and a Smirnoff,
including a Red Stripe he divined
beneath and through a pile of shattered empties
He gave me some of his beer
He insisted
We searched for an hour and then talked
He had discovered the booze earlier in the day
when he had walked up to the dumpster
to throw away a soda bottle
he saw a bottle of whiskey
He finished it off
Then he saw an unopened beer
Beautiful women dressed for the town
walked past us tramps, women who
talked to me
who i had something
to say to
when i had a career
before i shattered myself
against the thing
I was supposed to live in
I wanted to get back to the hotel
before my beer
got any more outdated
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