• Skip to content
  • Skip to secondary navigation
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Painted Bride Quarterly

  • About
    • About PBQ
    • People
  • Issues
    • Current Issue
    • Past Issues
    • Print Annuals
  • Podcast
    • Latest Podcast
    • All Podcasts
  • News & Events
  • Submit
  • Shop
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Prose
  • Contributors
  • Current Issue

Patrick Boyle: Going Away Party

August 24, 2017 by PBQ Leave a Comment

Max stands in the doorway with a bottle
of whiskey. He is drunk and I am
getting there. I follow the leader,

the liter disappears as we play,
as our throats pull fast shots.
He deploys to Iraq

in a few days, the inevitable
soldier’s going. We’re drunk.
We keep drinking. We drink drunk

and the swift world spins ’round
our room as we char up the old
times that corkscrew in our veins—

as campus-kings who fuck around
through midterms, smoke hookah
in the bathrooms, wrestle, knife fight,

drink drunk, follow the leader,
the inevitable bottled at our throats.
He plays soldier in the doorway.

We char up the world that spins ’round
our drunk veins. We deploy whiskey shots
to wash the dizzy grit from our mouths.

Filed Under: Contributors 96, Issue 96, Poetry, Poetry 96 Tagged With: contributors 96, issue 96, Patrick Boyle, Poetry, poetry 96

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Recent News & Events

PBQ @ AWP!

PBQ Poet’s Publishing Premier: Carlos Andrés Gómez’s Fractures

Issue 100 Has Arrived!

Temporarily Closing Submissions

PBQ presents: Slam Bam Reboot

© 2020 Painted Bride Quarterly. Contact PBQ: info@pbqmag.org