He had some Wheat Thins
on an empty belly midnight
and that’s alright this midnight
‘cause he had two more bottles of wine,
and he packed a picnic
and went down to Race and Third to find
the woman
who sells her six-year-old for $350 and a hit of crack.
More than she could make all night
on her own claw-hammered back.
And hammered is the operative word in this scenario –
every thing and every body here gets hammered.
And the next day it’s all bad,
grotesque regret of the most physically demanding kind.
Deep cuts through deep cuts,
bright red blood in the water of the bath.
The vodka and the oxycodone and the xanax bottles
and the mirror
hammered into splinters on the splattered floor.
As I sew up his wrists, he tells me all this and that
it’s no use me telling him that everyone’s a sinner. He is not
a skimmer like my kind of sinner.
He’s in it for the full throw.
The deep swallow.

–Bobby Steve Baker,
Numbered Bones (2011)
Accents Publishing

Bobby Steve Baker was born in Ontario, Canada in 1951, but has lived and practiced cosmetic surgery in Lexington, Kentucky for many years. He holds an MFA degree in Poetry from National University and has published in various literary journals, including Ann Arbor Review, Boston Literary Magazine, and Grey Sparrow Journal. In 2009, his poetry in tinfoildresses was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Bobby grew up in a home where poetry was ever-present but began to write seriously only in the past few years.