Bottoms Up

Shot glasses painted with names and places
fill Las Vegas souvenir shops, immortalize
people, events, well known weekend secrets
available for purchase and to personalize
by sidewalk vendors selling wares outside
Caesar’s Palace, Bally’s, Circus Circus,
the Mirage, Bellagio, and MGM Grand casinos.

Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe impersonators
walk arm in arm around tourists, take photos,
send prospective buyers and low-end gamblers
into the belly of a beast where watered down
liquor tops shot glass after shot glass, drinkers
thrive on jiggers and twisted logic, memorialize
wasted nights buying mementos they’ll never use.