The Office of Jim Trainer
709 Rio Grande
Austin, TX
11/15/13, 12:36 PM
Dear Charlie O’Hay-
I’m out front Dirty Bill’s and it sure feels good&warm in that Texzas sun. The girl who usually works happy hour is off, my boss lets me eat here as long’s I pick him up a Blackened Fish salad and “hurry back”. I hope you don’t mind me writing. I barely know you, if at all, but I write letters to folks when I can’t write, or, to justify a few beers while on shift and living to die.
I was about to write: “We poets…”, but, fuck that. I wouldn’t read anything that said that. While it’s true that I don’t know you, we must test each other’s mettle, Charlie. We must bleed the Poet’s Heart and see if we can be as vulnerable&strong as people like Lamaont Steptoe or Adrienne Rich.
I think we can agree that the finest poem we’ll ever write will be the first beer of the day, and the sun on your back is a reason to live…so, I don’t think I’m too out of my depth in writing you.
We will live to see stranger things than our own mortality, Brother. And, ironically or no, survival is prize. And children. And dog love. I’ll have to cut this short be cause here she comes-the other kind.
Love is pain, but as we close the distance between us&the Sun, all is burning. (She’s a blonde and you know how that goes.)
Yours,
TRAINER
Going for the Throat 