The way in is through thick double doors, between foyered palms, past

elderly stewards kneading hands. Fifty-dollar notes are exchanged for

happy-go-lucky seats, silver-dint-bar-tinkling machines. They lay down

their cards, sit hunched into their rib cage; sink into a consciousness of

play and battle.

In this warning to the gambler, one sees imprisonment and little daylight.

How many gamblers have been trapped in aisled rooms littered

with cigarette ash, zoo noises, furniture oozing years of spilled gin?

How many gamblers have watched two Kings scarper into a barrel turn?

How many have seen the chips scuttle before a fall, that fraction

before a missed fortune?

I have been thinking about the injustice, the raffle prizes paltry

in their wrapping, lukewarm hash browns, that free mother’s day

cup of coffee, and the club’s mounting fortune illuminating every corner.

I want to suggest to the gambler the narrative of despair, the febrile image

of lungs, Svengali at the lucky wheel, scuzzy manager in the Bahamas 
                        under bamboo green

                        suave, con moto in moonlight

                        splashing bikinis