Drinks with Poets: Jessica Server and Nancy Krygowski [by Sherrie Flick]

Today, I drink with two poets who explore how and where and when and why we drink. From Kelly's Bar to Salt of the Earth. --Sherrie Flick

Salt of the Earth - Jessica Server

Before my senior year at Boston University, I was introduced to the Cantab Lounge. I had just turned 21, had just returned from living abroad (where I’d discovered my tolerance for tequila), and after having spent most of my life acting older than my years, had just learned to embrace the peak of my youth.

A Central Square dive, the Cantab became a kind of classroom for me – the kind with bluegrass and twinkly lights. I recall a sense of great clarity, as though the Cantab was right where I was supposed to be.

My tastes have since changed, moving from clear – tequila, gin, and vodka— to the complex, the browns and reds of whiskey, bourbon, and wine. Craft cocktails. Old Vine Zinfandels.

While I love the smoky earthiness of where I’ve landed, I sometimes crave those unfettered undertones - juniper or agave – that cut to my youth, even knowing that memory has distilled them into something much simpler than truth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scotch - Chivas, Chartreuse, Sorel, Apple, Lemon at Salt

 

The Cantab Lounge

The fifth string of the twangy mandolin

pulled on my shirt’s loose third button.

Charlie’s intense eyes, his face caught up in

 

a violation of the white moon-face

of his banjo, before he left that place

and moved to Nashville, before I made a case

 

for myself; I had to grow the fuck up.

Long summer nights were hot with sap

dripping from trees to the Charles. The club

 

hid me in all that freedom to solo.

I envied them, in lax plaids and bolo

ties, flaunting their sexy pit stains that show

 

ardor, how men can be grimy and hot

and still beautiful. Effortless charm bought

strum by strum—like twisted threads in a knot

 

they needed only each other, the stink

of the place, cheap whiskey, their own fingers.

I tapped the table, downed another drink.

I never told them I played, could fingerpick

and strum; I preferred fandom as I licked

salt off the pad of my hand. It was quick

 

when later at the club Charlie’s hands found

my ass, played it like a five-string around

the floor. He studied me close, churned me out

 

in old timey rhythms. I was once

a tuned and polished dulcimer—a young

rare thing, yet easily mastered. I clung

 

to the music upon me. And just as fall

arrived, I lost it; chose instead those walls 

and the club’s cool gray cement floors. It all

 

happened at the Cantab, where I turned down

settling down, replaced it with dim lights, brown

corduroy thin at the knees from owning

 

the music. It was the twang. The cheap feel

of damp breezes up my jean skirt. A real

desire that one night, I’d shock them all, peel

 

two shots of tequila down at the Cantab,

sling a banjo on my knee. So badly

I wanted to jam, toss my hair, their plaid

 

sweaty equal. But I didn’t. So I

slid the skirt further up my pale thin thigh

and played the part I knew. Later, high

 

and blithe on the stoop of Charlie’s worn, white

Central Square three-flat, fiddles collided

with the burnt morning, let loose the tide—

 

a tongue flicking its way down my neck’s

skin in perfectly measured flesh-frets,

a hand unbuttoning my shirt on the bed—

 

later still, I stroked his banjo’s pearly strings,

slid each nickel-plated rope between my fingers

as he slept, his rolling breaths falling into sync.

 

Kelly's Bar - Nancy Krygowski

For more than 20 years, and in many different states, Sherrie and I have drunk together. Since we've lived in Pittsburgh, Kelly's has been a favorite bar, probably because its dim lighting, loud music, and low slung vinyl booths recall the dive bars of our youth. There, the past mingles with the present.

My thoughts about the ways in which drinking--what I drink, how I drink, why I drink, who I drink with--has changed for me over the years prompted this poem.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Manhattan - Kelly's Bar

 

So Easy

Someone says a woman’s name and someone else says, she’s getting

divorced but I only met her at a party, a nervous hour and a half where

 

I didn’t have much to say, not so different from now—sitting in a bar

with women who won’t talk about their marriages, fears,

 

the fact that this is our lives—so we talk about clothes, food,

sometimes kids which makes me miss my 20’s and 30’s when life

 

was about sex. We didn’t sleep because of sex, we ran because of sex,

streaked our hair, hurt our friends, searched for used combat boots,

 

free condoms because of sex and more sex—and we worked

to buy alcohol which we drank for fun, not to relax.  Now the almost-

 

divorced woman is as close as we get to that gut rush, fever gasp, life-

and-death feeling that has nothing to do with death, which is why

 

we want it.  So easy, the woman at the party had said, handing me

a scallion smeared with cream cheese, wrapped in ham.  She couldn’t

 

think what to bring then remembered her mother, cigarette in right hand,

tray in left, heels clicking linoleum then quieting on shag as she served

 

her friends onions.  How simple life can be, the woman had said, or that’s

what my reaching heart wanted to think.  Did she know then her husband

 

would leave? That she didn’t love him, or he didn’t love her?  I know

these words are merciless, too roomy to hold love’s delicate glasswork. 

 

Same as the question I won’t ask:  What makes us happy?  We pause

long and loud when the waiter says, Would you like a second round?    

**

Jessica Server received her MFA from Chatham University. Currently, she writes a weekly food column for Pittsburgh City Paper. She works as a writer and teaching artist in Pittsburgh. Sever the Braid is her debut chapbook. 

 

 

 

 

Nancy Krygowski’s first book of poems, Velocity, won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press. She was the Booker of Poets for the Gist Street Reading Series.

Comments

[isaac]

Wonderful post, maintain your hard work, you’re doing it right!

[jane]

love it