I'm a wine drinker so this is all a bit heavy for me.
Is "jigger" too small a vessel to replace "tumbler" in line 4?
It reminds me of the time I passed out after one glass of scrumpy.
I'm afraid that I don't care for the Alexandrine last line. One swallow would have made the point better I feel.
It's a successful poem for me because it's so enclosed and concentrated.
Janet
Demon Rum
The beachfront bar's an altar built to rum:
Mt. Gay, Bacardi, Pusser's, Appleton.
An acolyte attends on the steel drum
while I drain frosted tumblers one by one.
Novitiate to the beauty of cane punch,
I'm swaying in the demon's sweaty hold
with nothing but an old, reliable hunch
that one more round and I will be out cold.
Who cares? Curled up in rum's warm sugar shack
I think, "If this is love; it's not half bad."
The old thirst snakes my veins: reptilian, black,
sucking the life from every dream I've had,
stranding me here where you can never follow,
and as the cries clot in my throat, I swallow, swallow.
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