by Nathaniel Cairney
Rainy autumn night in Paris.
Low light, soft jazz, a smooth
wooden polished bar, the smell
of cigarettes drifting in
when someone opens a door
and I’m back there again
in the thick of midnight
chaos, smoke and neon,
glasses in midspill, white-
teethed screaming boys
nicknamed after meats
flinging themselves at one
another, the sheriff nowhere,
old man Chili behind the bar
reaching for a shotgun, Dwight
Yoakam yodeling from speakers,
hard-eyed women in jeans
leaning tense against the walls,
that rush of cold through my chest
as I saw what real violence
looked like, the instinct kicking in,
finally knowing where I stood
when it came to staying or going –
Nathaniel Cairney is an American poet and novelist who lives in Belgium. His chapbook Singing Dangerously of Sinking was a finalist for the 2021 Saguaro Prize in Poetry, and his poems have been published in The Cardiff Review, Midwest Review, Broad River Review and others.