The bar is called Poemeleon. You can be anyone you want here, but management is trying to add some humor to the place’s ambience just now. The first poet to walk in, Dan Nowak, has an anger-tinged sense of humor (or a humor-tinged anger, maybe). He orders a cheap vodka (“Promoting World Peace”), downs it and announces “I will force the jukebox to play Journey and Skynard / for the moonlit, star-light crowd” (“Picking Up Spares”). One of our televisions is showing a Bengals-Rams game, and Nowak quips, “Pants that tight / should be dancing to Madonna” (“Projecting Primalism”). He tells me that he’s beat from waiting tables all day – “I told people our salad / dressings for eleven hours” (“Burroughs at Midnight”). Another of our televisions is showing a NASCAR race that gives Nowak a headache, the roar of engines “so loud it drowns out / the beer tabs hissing / like a cockroach” (“Finally Understanding Frost”). He stays and gets drunk — on vodka and beer, yes, but also on words, words, words. He says, “Red or blue, words don’t care / which side they’re on, they are / for Christianity and gay marriage” (“Naked and Ugly, It’s What We Love”).