Mixing Manhattans in Heaven
When skies drizzle over Baltimore,
I taste bourbon in the air, and know
my parents are drinking Manhattans—two each—
in a bistro in another realm,
where ice cubes like stars clink into night;
maraschino cherries dazzle the winter-weary earth.
After cocktails, my father leads the choir, blends
a bevy of languages into song. My mother
crochets a pearl afghan every angel covets.
My parents lounge, share a cloud,
reminisce about how they met at a bus stop
in the spring of 1940.
I want one more happy hour with them,
a wedge of time to toast their light, the way
they shape this new green season.
Shirley J. Brewer
The Cortland Review, 2012
Bistro in Another Realm, 2017
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In Bistro in Another Realm, award-winning Baltimore poet Shirley Brewer offers fresh insights into the different realms of being human. Brewer will be reading selections from her new book at The Ivy Bookshop ~ Wednesday, August 2, 2017 – 7:00pm. The Ivy Bookshop is located at 6080 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD 21209. For more information about this reading event, visit The Ivy Bookshop.
![Shirley J. Brewer](https://baltimorepostexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/userphoto/383.thumbnail.jpg)
Shirley J. Brewer graduated from careers in bartending, palm-reading and speech therapy. She serves as poet-in-residence at Carver Center for the Arts & Technology in Baltimore. Her poems garnish BarrowStreet, Poetry East, Slant, Gargoyle, Comstock Review, and many other journals. Shirley’s poetry chapbooks include A Little Breast Music, 2008, Passager Books, and After Words, 2013, Apprentice House. In 2017, Main Street Rag released her first full-length collection of poems, Bistro in Another Realm. Shirley was awarded the first Creativity Award for Excellence in Plorking (Play + Work) from the University of Baltimore, where she earned her Master’s degree in Creative Writing/Publishing Arts. Her definition of shame is a bare wrist.