Many thanks to LatinosUSA —English edition for featuring my poem, "worms in the gut"!

You could smell him
from the entrance. Always the same. He’d enter,
wearing the same faded jeans
and brown shirt
pass by the tables
salute and shake hands with those he knew,
usually the whole place

pull out a bill from his
back pocket
Put it into one of the slot machines
Choose a simple game with fruit symbols
and activate the autoplay feature
then look for a drinking buddy

He rarely picked me
but that evening he did

Sat down across from me and lit
a cigarette
and went on talking

“I’m pretty damn positive,” he said.
“There’s worms in my
gut.”

“How d’ you know?” I asked

He grabbed his shirt and
stretched it
away from his chest. “Look at me. I’m
scrawny as a putrid toothpick. But my
gut stays round and swollen. Plus, I’m always
hungry even after I eat. Even
after I drink
beer. Stomach feels ever empty,
ever grinding
on naked gears. It’s hell, man.
Seriously, don’t
get married.”

“What?”

“What?”

“What was that about marriage? I thought
you were telling me about
your gut worms.”

Nodding, he grabbed a paper
napkin and
wiped at a beer stain on
the front
of his shirt. “Marriage is like gut worms, alright.
It consumes you
from the inside and eats away
more than half of everything you try
to invest in yourself. Also,
you can’t possibly get rid of it without causing
serious damage to your body. And
dignity.”

“Oh. Um, are you married?” I looked at his
fingers. Saw no ring. Only
a lot of dirt rimming his cracked nails

He watched the
slot machine
on autoplay as he replied, “I was engaged, yes.
Healthiest times of my life. My love
introduced me to
one of those blender machines. We put
in carrots and apples, pears,
prunes, oranges, and a lot of ginger. Now
that shit was healthy. But
you see, a healthy lifestyle only works
if you’re healthy to begin with. It doesn’t
work with people like me. I prefer
investing the money
into the fruits of slot machines, not
blender machines.
My love, she didn’t like that. It’s…
probably what determined
her to add bugs to my smoothies.”

“Damn, what kind of bugs?”

“Eh, you know, all that can be found in
one’s garden. Grasshoppers,
ants, cockroaches, butterflies, centipedes,
ladybugs, snails, spiders, rat shit. The usual.”

“And you drank them every time? How
long did it
take you to figure out what
she did?”

He shrugged. “Eight years? Ten?”

“I see. And, did you have any big wins
at the slot machines in those
years?”

He shifted on his chair to reach
with his hand and scratch
his ass before answering. “Well, nah. But
I definitely will tonight. Just
watch.”

We watched the slot machine
going on autoplay
Watched it like a very entertaining show
on TV
There was something to it,
something almost magical. It wasn’t so
much in the slot machine itself
as it was in
the eye of the gambler. You could tell
he was the type of man
to get drunk and then mug you for
gambling money
and you’d hate him for it only as much
as you’d hate the rain for getting your clothes
wet or the bee for stinging you

He was a natural element of
the town’s ecosystem

I still miss
the bastard

Unlike the creditors who came after
him a couple of
nights later

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Thank you!