Patsy Cline

By David Martin

It's midnight and I'm driving the kids
for doughnuts, Krispy Kremes!, all sugar-glazed
and warm air, and as we cruise the strip I
pop in a tape and Patsy Cline fills the night
with heartache, suddenly I'm back at
The Village Inn tavern, it's Saturday morning
and the cool darkness is filled with carpenters
hunched over beers and my brother and I
play shuffleboard without any dimes and stare
at the men in their white socks and glaring shins.
We study the jukebox and play "Love Me Do"
and the bartender says "it's broken, boys" —
and then he plugs it in again
and says "now she's fixed." One man says
he's gonna quit his job and work in the mill
and another says he told his
sunnuvabitch foreman to step outside
and dad says he'll have one more and that's when
some clown plays Patsy Cline and she sings about
being lonely, the kind of loneliness
that dies inside of you and it gets so quiet
you can hear the tap gurgle, everyone
rubs the table with their fingers
as if they can somehow rub away the
loneliness lurking inside their hearts.
It's no different tonight, I'm tooling along
looking for doughnuts and when Patsy asks
if you've ever been lonely I'm not
laughing with the boys anymore, or singing,
I'm not thinking about doughnuts, I'm
thinking about my aching heart, something
I'm really good at finding lately.
I could really love a woman like that.
I could fill her with my whole being
but I know that wouldn't even be close,
I just can't fill that kind of heartache,
hell, it's hard enough just getting doughnuts.