Alcoholics are considered mentally weak people. To be one means you have spanned the label of social outcasts that can’t self-manage. By Ally Malinenko

After a week off, 
staying home, 
I walk around the apartment,  
picking up wine bottles, 
dotting the floor like bowling pins.  

There are beer bottles too  
and two empty plastic jugs 
from cheap scotch.  

I gather them up,  
to bring downstairs for recycling,  
the bag clanking  
the sweet acrid smell of red wine  
and the chalky scent of beer  
dotting my fingertips and filling the elevator.  

As the doors close 
I vow that next week  
when we get back to work  
I’ll be better.  

Because being better is what we do as Americans.  
Because this is clearly 
too much, 
too much fun,  
too much debauchery  
too much drinking.  

So I promise that next week, 
when I need to get up early  
and walk to work and function  
as a grown up,  
I’ll bring the bottles down  
at least once a day 
instead of letting them collect  
like I did this time.



Ally Malinenko is the author of The Wanting Bone (Six Gallery Press), Lizzy Speare and the Cursed Tomb (Antenna books) and This Is Sarah (BookFish Books). She currently lives in the part of Brooklyn that was voted to have the best halal truck and can be at @allymalinenko blathering on about Doctor Who.

This Zine Will Change Your Life previously published Garage Sale by Ally Malinenko. Check it out.

Street art by Kashink. 
Photo by Adam Lawrence. 

Small Houses is the work Flint, MI native Jeremy Quentin. This track comes from his forthcoming album Still Talk which will be released on Feb. 10th via The Cottage Recording Co.