Dogs Playing Poker

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they’d play poker on Wednesday’s some weeks and called it a tradition even though it happened without regularity and it was mainly quietly sipping malt liquor from a garage refrigerator and losing money and minds in unison in a state of vague indifference or maybe an eagerness to lose so they could finally go home though I never saw anyone leave but I’d ask dad about the tradition and he’d say maybe someday I’d do the same saying that losing with friends was better than doing it alone and I never asked about any alternative because there weren’t words for that so I’d lay in bed as fall turned to winter and listen to losing that sometimes didn’t sound like it based of the laughter that hung in ethanol air and sometimes I’d try and recall that laughter later in life or the smell of burning corn or the sound of dying cicadas and I never could I later asked dad if he remembered that laugh and he said he didn’t and I wondered if it were the insects laughing at our game or the inevitability that some day soon we’d rub our legs together too and wait for it to get cold so we could finally die