By Kirk Weixel

When I used to do it
it was stuff like
cigarettes and candy
or when I was smaller
candy cigarettes
girls on the rocks
not shaken but stirred
movies with Bogart or Bergman and
Winstons and whiskey and wine
things I was addicted to then
or would be later
forty days of learning how to sin
of loving a vice postponed
waiting for the devil to rise
a coffin nail in one hand
and something amber over ice
in the other as he grinned and said,
“We’ll always have Easter.”

Kirk Weixel is an English professor emeritus at Saint Francis University, Loretto, Pa., where he continues to teach courses in literature and creative writing. He and his wife, Mary Jeanne, a former reference librarian, have three children.