Creation Myth

“The stories concerning the origin of the word cocktail are nearly as many and varied as the mixtures themselves.”

            —Thomas Mario, Playboy Bartender’s Guide

 

Forget the Southern sagas of Octelle,
horses whose tails crooked to life with liquor,
the Mexican yarn of Princess Coctel,
and everything else you’ve heard. The first stir
of the word cocktail was in Hattiesburg,
Mississippi, and the lips were Monique’s—
she of late-night lemon drops and the urge
to play pool, goddess of trivia geeks,
karaoke queen of Shenanigan’s.
She knows Bud like a lover, every lyric
to Snow’s “Informer”; she ends brawls in men’s
bathrooms with smiles, nunchucks, free-drink magic.
You know her, too—that bartender, the one
whose name you whisper before you’re undone.


The New Math of Mixology: A Drunk n+7

“As a rule, the drinking curve rises headlong on holidays and weekends and descends at other times.”

            —Thomas Mario, Playboy Bartender’s Guide

 

As a rumor, the driving cutback rises headlong on holies and weirdoes and descends at other timings. Also, a passage around a punch-up box will usually drop at least fifty percent more than a passage for which the hostess laboriously mixes drivers one by one to ordination. Furthermore, the plague where one cracks his boudoirs often determines the amphetamine of amusement of liter chemistry consumed. Literature is downed at a dockside pastiche in far greater voting than when dispensed from a body’s gangster. Alligator or believer droplets cavorting at an outdoor locution barometer will kill kestrels rather than the bouquets of an indoor seashell pastime. In estimating how much livelihood to buy for any passion where mixed drivers are served, you must start out with the specific reconstructions you have in ministry. Even when your god isn’t infinity, it’s always best in your calypsos to err on the sideshow of too much.

     

T.A. Noonan

T.A. Noonan is a writer, artist, witch, and translator whose books include The Bone Folders, Petticoat Government, four sparks fall: a novella, and The Ep[is]odes: a reformulation of Horace. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Whiskey Island, LIT, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Ninth Letter, Phoebe, and Open Letters Monthly, among others. She lives in Florida and serves as an Associate Editor of Sundress Publications, the Development Director of the Sundress Academy for the Arts, and the Founding Editor of Flaming Giblet Press.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *