O'malley's bar

• Petra Mosmann, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2004

Old Man with the stained brown hat
Drinks luke warm beer, slightly soapy,
With other tight-lipped, folded-skin men.
This love affair, it gathers at the bar.
I wonder about these beer stains of men,
Furry life, springing from the rotting orange carpet.
How strange to think
That the sexy thing with the belly top,
Standing on the corner, waiting,
Sprung like mould from the loins
Of one of these old mole diggers.
She is proof that once they too
Walked lightly on the earth,
Who now hide in their crumpled hole
And stand, one leg cemented in the fat of history
And the other in O’Malleys Bar.