First Coca-Cola

Maybe a sin, indecent for sure—dope, The storekeeper called it. Everyone agreed That Manuel Lawrence, who drank Through the side of his mouth, squinting And chortling with pleasure, was hooked; Furthermore, Aunt Brenda, Who was so religious that she made Her daughters bathe with their panties on, Had dubbed it “toy likker, fool thing,” And so might I be, holding the bottle Out to the light, watching it bristle. Watching the slow spume of bubbles Die, I asked myself, could it be alive? When they electrocuted Edwin Dockery, He sat there like a steaming, breathing Bolt, the green muscles in his arms Strained at the chair’s black straps, The little finger of his right hand leapt up, But the charge rose, the four minutes And twenty-five hundred volts of his death, Which in another month will be Thirty-five years old. So the drink fizzed With the promise of mixtures to come. There it was. If the hard-shell Baptists of Alabama are good and content That the monster has died, so am I. I swallowed. Sweet darkness, one thing Led to another, the usual life, waking Sometimes lost, dried blood in the ear, Police gabbling in a strange language. How else would I ever gauge How pleasure might end, walking Past midnight in the vague direction Of music. I am never satisfied.