Three Feelings Walk Into a Bar by Kerrie Penney

Grief kicked open the door, he’d been smoking again
—the smell of my father at lunchtime—shouted scotch!
Stunts your growth, he warned,
or was that caffeine? Anyway
 
he shouted because he was short. Please,
don’t tell him that to his face--
Grief throws a pretty good punch.
 
Disappointment, elbows on the bar,
stirred the pink umbrella in her drink, thinking
orange juice from a can, and no Malibu rum,
but what did I expect from a place like this?
 
Hope turned from the jukebox,
Katrina & the Waves, the twenty-second time
today, another bag of loonies
and walking on sunshine.
 
Bobbed back to the barstool,
getting up is getting harder
she sank as Grief gestured
for another round.
 
Make it three he growled,
and they raised their glasses.
 
To what are we drinking? Disappointment
peered from under the brim
of her Mother’s hat.
 
Grief grunted, the lump in his gullet
made space for Hope
who cleared her throat.
 
To the future? she waited…
 
and they nodded and clinked--
to the future! They’d all drink to that.
  
Appeared in issue 163 The New Quarterly

---

About Kerrie Penney
Kerrie's words have appeared in The New Quarterly, Pinhole Poetry, Funny Pearls UK, the YYC Poet Laureate project This Might Help and the Globe and Mail. She is currently working on a book length manuscript mapping the road to crone, and is the creator of the Secret Heart Broadcasting podcast.