My shadow is quite drunk,
but the desert will dry me out.
In the alcoholic bath of my own sweat,
I empty the bottle,
then stagger into the sunburned land
of footprints walking in circles,
of a clumsy surfer on tsunami dunes.

I seal a message to myself in the bottle,
drop it in the waves of sand
where I am going down for the third time,
still wanting that bottle back, full
of 100 proof whose last drop
tastes like a tear that falls forever,
and staying dry is staying in the desert
among mirages of monsoons,
downpours where the happy hour sign winks
and the bar is set low,
where courage is drained by the ounce
and the next step is backwards.

Robert S. King lives in Athens, GA, where he serves on the board of FutureCycle Press and edits Good Works Review. His poems have appeared in hundreds of magazines, including Atlanta Review, California Quarterly, Chariton Review, Hollins Critic, Kenyon Review, Main Street Rag, Midwest Quarterly, Negative Capability, Southern Poetry Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review. He has published eight poetry collections, most recently Diary of the Last Person on Earth (Sybaritic Press 2014), Developing a Photograph of God (Glass Lyre Press, 2014), and Messages from Multiverses (Duck Lake Books, 2020). His personal website is www.robertsking.info.