Mike Puican

Joke

The one Dad told after Uncle Bob’s homemade beer,
A dog walks into a bar and orders a beer.

As a child there were things I never mentioned:
dogs walking into bars, ordering beers,

Uncle Bob coming home drunk asking me to dance.
A dog walks into a bar and orders a beer.

In the 90s, I drank, smoked pot, shot pool while
dogs under the bar lapped up our spilled beers.

“Stick your head in this noose.” And I do.
A dog walks into a bar and orders a beer.

Then custody battles over who gets the dog.
The dog waits at the bar nursing its beer.

Dog, my little flame, ignite this bar,
You, me, our beers.

Invented life: we can say anything!
A mallard walks into a bar and orders a duckquiri.

Once again, a bartender walks up to me and says:
​“S’up, dog? Need a beer?”
​

---

Through Slender Branches Storm Clouds Scatter to Reveal a New Winter Moon

                                          
Three men in black wool
winter coats—ankle-length, waist-
tied and buttoned down—

stand holding hand rails
while staring at transit signs,
their phones, the woman

who is sitting and
gazing out the window. She’s
also dressed in black.

The windows darken
as the train descends into
the subway tunnel.

Overhead a sky-
blue bank ad in which a boy
in yellow shorts beams.
​

---

Eden Is Lost

Eden is lost,
but the kitchen

is here. It marks
the end of

our sadness. The rest:
God’s pessimism.

This could be a bar
in Buckhead

where bartenders
labor in poverty

but not despair. See,
one lays her

head on a rail
as if a doorway.

Outside a dog
snarls at a mole,

shadows begin to
take us leaf by leaf,

two boys with sticks
enact stories of

death and war, above them
a rose shines

like a light. Today,
as I attempt

to split the winter
wood, pine sap

stains articulate
the moment.

Today, the soul
leaves the body.
​

Finally some work
​gets done.

​--
​Mike Puican has poetry either published or forthcoming in Poetry, Michigan Quarterly Review, Courtland Review, and New England Review, among others. He also writes reviews for Cerise Press, Another Chicago Magazine, and TriQuarterly Online.