Bootle
Used to been you could buy beer
up at Bootle’s bootleg liquor store.
You could get what you needed
and it come with a raffle ticket.
You’d come back on Friday
and if you won you got a whole case.
He lived and bootlegged out
of the defunct Clark Hill Elementary.
It had a drive-thru window for convenience
and we all piled up in the big blue truck
and drove up there on the weekend.
He’d be in there watching a porno,
selling a buck a beer, and wearing
a “What Would Jesus Do?” bracelet.
He bought the short bus, if you can believe it.
Painted it all black and booked it on the backroads.
Filled it up with beer he bought on discount
off the back of some city slicker’s truck.
He was making money hand over fist.
We were seventeen years old.