Mothers in the Bar
By Meg Freer
Late at night we threw ice off the roof of Spokane’s historic Ridpath Hotel where Elvis had once booked three floors for his drunken entourage ordered windows painted black, loaded a room with his bodyguards’ guns sent for lobster tails after midnight, sent back eggs to be cooked hard as rocks where we rode the high-speed elevator, raced to ice machines on each floor— giddy on adrenaline from several days of music festival performances and evenings of practice on the white baby grand at the piano store— where we pressed the Penthouse button for the intriguing, unlucky 13th level. When the door slid open, we spied on the high rollers dancing in the club found our way in the dark to the open-air roof, leaned over the railing whooped and hollered when our ice missiles hit a car or bus hoped people down below would wonder why there was hail in May while our mothers in the hotel bar with drinks on the rocks tried for an hour to forget they were responsible for us.
Meg Freer lives in Ontario, where she is a writer, editor, and piano teacher. Her work has appeared in many journals, and she has published three poetry chapbooks. She is co-poetry editor for The Sunlight Press and holds two music degrees and a Graduate Certificate in Creative Writing. Find her published work on her Facebook page, or her Substack blog at megfreer.substack.com.
04/10 / Poetry Reading and Conversation with visiting poet-in-residence Chloe Martinez and local poet Ximena Gómez / The BBar at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7-8:30 pm EST / Free
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