The Onion Closed Before I Had the Chance to See the Wild Win the Stanley Cup

What a thing to miss, dirty
floors & cheap drinks like
I couldn’t find this in
many bars, in any town,
but none of those places
would know how, at 21,
Ashley drank vodka cranberries
from a beer pint & puked
in the bathroom then
we all got kicked out
or how we bought shots
when the Wild, down
0-3, rallied to tie it up
in the second, first
Zucker then Parise then
Granlund only to lose
by one in the third or
how we screamed
as they lost the series
to Chicago, winless
again. When the Onion
turned off the lights that
final time the sign hung
outside for weeks
before someone finally
cut it down.

Steve Merino (he/him) is a poet from Saint Paul, MN. His work can be found in perhappened, the Under Review, and others. A list of full publications can be found at https://linktr.ee/steve_merino. Follow him on twitter @steve_merino.