18 of 30 Elegy for Anson Edwards

They wrote your name
on the end of the bar
and did coke off it.

Like a plywood tombstone,
to kick, to pour beer over.
 You hold court  in the red lights
The bartender pounds on the bar
with a baseball bat

My sister carries a picture of you
in a football uniform, improbably young
and uninked, you squint into the sun

they put your body in the ground
and went to the bar and did rails
on the toilet tanks
wrote you a sharpied epitaph
in beer soaked plywood

Hail the conquering hero