Lewis Turco
Poetry
Lewis Turco is the inventor of the verse form called the “bluesanell,” and a contributor to the recently-published Garnet Poems: An Anthology of Connecticut Poetry Since 1776, edited by Dennis Barone (Wesleyan) and Take Heart: Poems from Maine, edited by Wesley McNair (Down East).His most recent books, all published in 2012, are The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Including Odd and Invented Forms, Revised and Expanded Fourth Edition (UPNE); Wesli Court’s Epitaphs for the Poets (BrickHouse Books), and Dialects of the Tribe: Postmodern American Poets and Poetry (Stephen F. Austin State University Press), his second book of critical essays.
Monologue in a Bar
A Shakespearean Tailgater Bluesanelle
You will not pay for the glasses you have burst?
You say you’ll see I’m never reimbursed?
Then here’s a thimbleful to quench your thirst!
You do not plan to pay for what you’ve drunk?
I think you’ll pay, you miserable drunk!
If you’ll not pay for the glasses you have burst
I’ll drown you in a bathtub full of hooch,
A tub of rotgut gin, the stuff you mooch—
More than a thimbleful to quench your thirst!
I’ll toss you in a vat of liniment—
Aye! There’s the rub: you’ll drown in liniment
If you won’t pay for the glasses you have burst
Or the rotgut booze you’ve swigged, you stinking sot!
I’ll toss you in the vat, you sad tosspot—
I’ll make damned sure that I am reimbursed!
You swill my gin, then sit and needle me?
You think that after this you’ll wheedle me
If you’ll not pay for the glasses you have burst?
Then there’s no thimbleful to whet your thirst!
You will not pay for the glasses you have burst?
You say you’ll see I’m never reimbursed?
Then here’s a thimbleful to quench your thirst!
You do not plan to pay for what you’ve drunk?
I think you’ll pay, you miserable drunk!
If you’ll not pay for the glasses you have burst
I’ll drown you in a bathtub full of hooch,
A tub of rotgut gin, the stuff you mooch—
More than a thimbleful to quench your thirst!
I’ll toss you in a vat of liniment—
Aye! There’s the rub: you’ll drown in liniment
If you won’t pay for the glasses you have burst
Or the rotgut booze you’ve swigged, you stinking sot!
I’ll toss you in the vat, you sad tosspot—
I’ll make damned sure that I am reimbursed!
You swill my gin, then sit and needle me?
You think that after this you’ll wheedle me
If you’ll not pay for the glasses you have burst?
Then there’s no thimbleful to whet your thirst!
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