Checkerboard, Montana/DSC00164.jpg

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It's 2:15 on a Saturday afternoon in Checkerboard, Dick Hugo wrote this about a
similiar bar in Milltown:

The Milltown Union Bar

(Laundromat & Cafe)
You could love here, not the lovely goat
in plexiglass nor the elk shot
in the middle of a joke, but honest drunks,
crossed swords about the bar, three men hung
in the bad painting, others ruding off
on the phony green horizon. The owern,
fresh from orphan wars, loves too
but bad as you. He keep improving things
but can't cut the bodies down.

You need never leave. Money or a story
brings you booze. The elk is grinning
and the goat says go so tenderly
you hear him through the glass. If you weep
deer heads weep. Sing and the orphanage
announces plans for your release. A train
goes by and ditches jump. You were nothing
going in and now you kiss your hand.

When mills shut down, when the worst drunk
says finally I'm stone, three men still hang
painted badly from a leafless tree, you
one of them, brans tied behind your back,
swinging for your sin. Or you swing
with goats and elk. Doors of orphanages
finally swing out and here you open in.