Janet I. Buck
Excerpt from KotaPress Poetry Anthology Volume 2, 2002

That Nitro Pill

We no longer drink.
For a reason. It's a dull
and tedious tale.
Suffice to say,
I hopped on the booze horse
and never climbed off.
Fell instead.
A bottle of wine
sits in the fridge,
one glass gone from
yesterday's brunch,
which you drank and I poured.
Its yellowness,
corked and pretty
like an old lover
who was probably worse
in bed than my wish recalls.

Would it matter if I slipped?
And sipped from the church
where my bones grew up.
I pop the top. Take a sniff.
A piece of me floats
in the dregs of its
vinegar giddiness.
I was secure beneath
porous wood like the homeless
find warmth, in short scraps
of wind, near oil cans.
For years, it was that nitro pill
that held off raging heart attack.

Author Bio
Janet is a two-time Pushcart Nominee and her work has recently appeared in The Pittsburgh Quarterly, The Paumanok Review, Born Magazine, pith, Saothar Portfolio, Poetry Magazine.com, The Eclipse, pif, and Comrades. She is the author of three collections of poetry: Calamity's Quilt, Reefs We Live, and Bookmarks in a Hurricane. In April 2000, Janet's poem "Acrylic Thighs" was featured at the United Nations Exhibit Hall in New York City.