The Bar at the End of the World by Vikram Masson

You’ll take the Bergen Avenue
bus and pull the buzzer right around

McGinley Square where they would
have already lifted their third or fourth.

The Budweiser neon sign will flicker
and gasp like death as you enter into

the warmth of the little room, with its murky,
unwashed mirrors, its cigarette machine

that always has the Kools you smoke
because white guys don’t smoke them,

where the men talk the Yankees, Reagan,
and the wounds of the endless wars

their country made them fight. You always
wanted to lift a glass to the great writers

but every time you got sloshed enough
to talk Proust or to sing a song about Rilke

in the German you’d half forgotten
you remembered they would laugh you out

into the street, where the snow whipped
and eddied before crusting up against

the iron railings, where you’d be down
to your last 4 bucks while the leather frayed

off the toe box of your left boot, where old Joe
would find you wheezing with too many

cigarettes, sick with drink, and say,
you’re too young for this pain, go the hell home.



Vikram Masson writes at the intersection of faith, identity and culture. His poems have been featured or are forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, Glass, Juked, Prometheus Dreaming, Rust + Moth and Without a Doubt: poems illuminating faith (NYQ Books).