At midnight the three-piece band slows the tempo. The cigarette voice of a tall redhead with substantial cleavage starts singing a bluesy song about an aging artist and a whore. A couple moves onto the dance floor, their bodies soon fused in rhythmic gyrations. Everyone in here is unconscious, heads nodding or quietly mumbling in pairs. I sit alone at the bar, dancing in my head with a woman I’ve been trying to forget, my mind drowning in an alphabet soup of story lines. I keep telling myself this is no place for a writer, but I order another beer.


Jim Woessner is a visual artist and writer living in Sausalito, California. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from Bennington College and has had poetry and short fiction published in numerous online and print magazines.