It’s a grey february day, and we’re
just hanging out in old Niagara Falls,
in a bar next to the river, you know, you
can look out the smoke-smeared window,
and see the river across River Road, but
everyone there has seen that water all their
life, they don’t give a shit about the river or
the falls; maybe you might get a grunt or
something if you talked about Love Canal,
mainly cause everyone knows somebody
whose property values got ruined, and my
friend still points out that gash on the earth
every time we drive here to this sleazy but
not a biker bar here in her home town,
but the real purpose of coming here is
perfectly clear to us and everyone else.
We shoot pool.
The regulars at this bar know
their real purpose too, and they get to their
drinking and don’t even move, so we don’t ever
have to fight to put quarters in the table’s slot,
but we stack up the quarters for at least 10
games anyways, and then we chalk the cues
and then we rack the balls, and then WHOOSH
we break the balls, and you ain’t seen nothing
until you’ve seen the four of us playing pool
in a niagara falls bar in the middle of winter
with the whole bar wishing they were us,
and any guy who challenges our best
wishes he’d left the old bitches alone,
and we’re the main entertainment, we’re
the whole sunday afternoon show,
and we don’t ever let anybody down.
©1997 by Marilyn Moody
