The One Who Owns the Deer

If I had had a lick of sense
I'd have left the bar and never come back
when the guy two stools down
started screaming at me
about who owned the deer.

No one owns the deer, I said,
laughing a little too overtly,
seeing as I was always a happy drunk.

But someone has to own the deer,
he said, angrily.
Everything is owned by someone.

I just shook my head and tried to turn away.

The bartender thought it was funny too,
and egged him on,
which meant we had to talk
about the goddamnned deer some more.

So finally I said the deer are just wild animals
regulated by the state.

These were fighting words,
though the image of me and him rolling around
on the floor of the bar
over who owns the fucking deer
served mostly as a reminder
that them movies by those hotshot Hollywood directors -
you know, the ones that sometimes seem just plain weird -
can't hold a candle
to the real life shit
that goes down between common drunks
in pretty much any bar I've ever been in.

He eventually calmed down
and even apologized a few weeks later,
though when I laughed about it with him,
his eyes narrowed
ever so slightly,
and I could tell
he wasn't like me;
not a happy drunk at all.