A bar, like many bars, in a shopping center in Cambridge, Mass. I stopped there to wet my whistle one summer day.
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 A skeletal man

his torso

barely supports

a crisp white shirt-

his forehead

violated by a jet black

wedge of his toupee--

and a businessnman's

perfunctory

flirtation

with the scripted chatter

of the barmaid

(she assures us a few times

it is not the heat

but the humidity

that bothers her--)

looks to

his audience

staring into

the icy abyss

of frosted glasses,

an old man pipes up

and fawns over

a prized cat

who I think

with such suffocating attention

must be miserable

and I drink

to all this loneliness

made visible.