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Two Poems from The Pit
Tara Borin’s The Pit (Nightwood Editions) is a melancholic gallery of poems that contain perfect portraits of a small, sub-Arctic dive bar’s imperfect patrons and staff. Below we share two poems from the collection!
Two Poems from The Pit
Heartbreak HotelShe smokes a cigarette in her underwear by the tiny square of window, watches ravens tear into a dumpster in the puddled back alley. Eleven p.m. sunset smoulders into summer. In her room, empty takeout containers bloom across the bare wood floor, chow mein and ginger beef spice the air. Bedspread wilts from a tired bed; her life tumbles from the same duffle bag she arrived with a year ago. Love born in dust and black spruce. Drinking the expensive wine in the willows, the bottle passed between them as though it had cost much less. Slick thighs. When the cranes flew south, they took their love between four walls: a drafty cabin, bed in the corner. Lips traced in kerosene glow. They fed each other tinned mussels, cream crackers, licked oil from fingers. With each snowfall, the cabin seemed to shrink. As winter unravelled into spring, she watched her lover pace the walls, wild. The wood stove continued to eat whole swaths of forest in exchange for a heat that was too much to bear or else not enough. They broke like the river when the gulls returned. Now she’s alone in a cheap hotel room with the muck of all things done that cannot be undone. She can hear life going on, the rise and fall of it, classic rock and bar-top banter. She ashes into an empty beer can. How many heartbreaks has this room held?Sunday Morning Coming DownThe regulars gather
on a Sunday morning,
midsummer sun
as hard as sin
and I minister
to their hangovers
and mine.
Tourists toe the sill,
take pictures without asking,
order pints of Yukon Gold
as if that’s what
the locals do.
There’s a painting
over the bar
of two men fighting
for a drunk and cheering crowd—
this morning
they spring to life
and tumble
                        out
into the street:
dust-scuffle,
faces red and straining,
each punch
a lost connection.
Â
I’m calling the cops,
I yell from inside,
         (though we know
          they’ll never come).
The regulars
shake their heads
while the tourists laugh,
crowd the door and
take more pictures—
Aren’t we lucky
to be here today.
* * *
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