“Ares Inebriated” is one of two marvelously mythical poems by Bernadette McComish in our Fall 2017 issue.

{ X }

A LOADED GLOCK
a full shot—
That’s American, he mutters.

No grin or grimace
just down the throat
and another and what

will they sacrifice to him today—
a goat, a village, a teenager?
Would it matter if they knew

he was over it, done with war
or would they keep killing
in his new names, the ones he hates.

At the only bar
in a town with no strangers
he drinks alone and thinks

It’s 5 o’clock somewhere.

{ X }

BERNADETTE McCOMISH earned an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence, and an M.A. in TESOL from Hunter. Her poems have appeared in Cortland Review, Sunday Salon, Hospital Drive, Slipstream, Storyscape, Rag Queen Periodical, and she was a finalist for the New Millennium Writers 41st poetry prize. Her collection: The Book of Johns, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in 2018. She teaches High School in Los Angeles and believes that poetry is medicine.