Elizabeth Moura
my father walked into a bar
though he had died years ago
and sat next to me on a wonky stool
i should have asked him where he’d been
after he had ceased to exist
instead i ordered him whiskey with a cube
and the bartender slid it his way
the cube melted quickly
he took no notice
we didn’t speak of the afterlife
or this life either we stared
down at the dark old bar
he slid off the stool
and away into the twilight
that I realized
surrounded me too
About the writer:
Elizabeth Moura lives in a converted factory in a small city and works with elders in a small town. Moura has had poetry, flash fiction or photographs published in The Heron’s Nest, Chrysanthemum, Atlas Poetica, Presence, Shamrock, Flash, Paragraph Planet, Flash Fiction Magazine, Occulum and O:JA&L.
Image: Dice and Whiskey on Ice by Patrick Grimes. Oil on canvas. 16 x 20 inches. By 2018. By permission.
