The wall of pull-tab machines says
you’ll be lucky for a change.
I listened, April 10, 2010, lined dollars
on the bar and played. The bartender
loaned me a table knife to scratch the tabs
(the game: Undead Minotaur)
and I started to hit on the third or fourth—
a ten, a twenty, one hundred dollars—
the bartender checked carefully, it
was his watch, and I watched carefully:
it was my luck running then.
If you don’t bet, you don’t know the feeling.
Of course, I bought a round for the house
before I left. It was still light outside, a cold
sunset coming on. The thing about luck
is no one gets what they really want.
When your run is up, where does it leave you?
At the yawning entrance to the underworld.
But you’d stumble across it anyway,
its inebriate yowling from the dark,
the neutral spirit of probability having
finished its calculations. Looking for
a warm coat, a loose tin roof flapping
in someone’s wind.