[R. S. Gwynn]

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.

Another sonnet with a final alexandrine that works pretty well. The second line is a triumph, getting all those familiar labels into flawless pentameter. I think something better than "tumblers" could fit in line four--"chalices" would be the obvious choice but wouldn't work metrically. The metaphor in line eleven is a little redundant; after "snake," "reptilian" doesn't add anything. Who's the "you" in line thirteen? A little late for an auditor to be showing up in the poem.