The Poet as Nellie Green, Bootlegger

Behind my back, people call me Tugboat Annie,

but none dare say it to my face. Talmadge Hotel,


my speakeasy on the Farm River in East Haven,

Connecticut, was a stagecoach repair shop operated


by my father, Charlie Green. He brewed hootch,

mountain dew, white lightning, pop-skull, rot gut,


what my hillbilly uncle called Kentucky-mule.

Letting me “kick the barrel” for aging, Uncle Lenny


taught me to swing a jug from my index finger

and old-timey songs like The Kentucky Moonshiner:


I’ve been a moonshiner goin’ on seventeen year.

I spent all my money on whiskey and beer.

I’ll go to some holler and set up my still,

And sell you a gallon for a two-dollar bill


Far from Appalachian hollers, and more practical,

Daddy showed me nooks in the cellar where I


could stash oak casks and gallon bottles of booze

from New York City. In the Roaring Twenties,


I was the fastest rumrunner along the East Coast.

Feds, cops, nobody could catch me or my chief pilot,


“Wing” St. Clair. Out-racing the Coast Guard he’d

sing Here’s mud in your eye across Long Island Sound.


Safe in my boats, the Sparkle, Betty T and a converted

subchaser I christened Uno, none of my crew needed


to pack a gun. Tipped off about a raid by the sheriff,

a good customer, we stuck bottles of moonshine


in a field of cow manure. A real scorcher the day

feds searched, July heat caused bottles to blow up


and spout like humpback whales about to breach.

The jugs were up, the jig was up, but no one wanted


to wade that field to find out for sure. In my spare

time a poet, but never one who confessed all after


a few rounds, I took that explosion to heart. 1933,

Prohibition ended, I used my experience distilling


spirits as a metaphor to counsel steady customers

in my new nightspot, Nellie Green’s. Sampling


bourbon, vodka, gin, Scottish malts I’d imported,

we explored a variant of the uncertainty principle:


the more research we drank, the less reliable

the results. Teaching regulars impurity is what gives



whiskey its flavor, I urged the likes of Rudy Valee,

John Barrymore, Tyrone Power, Bing Crosby,


and Jack London to pour out their hearts, memories

they’d suppressed. Act out, or belt out, lyrics, stories


and poems revealing warts and all, or, fermenting,

repressed emotion would erupt as temperatures rose.

© Copyright, 2014, Vivian C. Shipley.
All Rights Reserved.