How About An El Drinko?
by Ralph Fletcher
from Relatively Speaking: Poems about Family
How about an el drinko?
my uncle asks first thing
when he shows up.
He fixes himself a drink,
Scotch-on-the-rocks
gulps Scotch after Scotch
and finally falls asleep
on the living room couch
snoring like a chain saw
cutting down some
faraway forest.
We talk around like
like nothing’s wrong
and my uncle becomes
one of the lost men
sprawled on the sidewalk
everyone pretends
not to see.