STEVE MCQUEEN’S BEER MAT. By Bruce Hodder

The old man had a lot of vices.

Compulsive bragging and compulsive lying,

in him, were like twin vines across a trellis:

hard to disentangle.

He was always coming home from work,

on the rare nights when he bothered coming,

with his latest magazine, his latest book;

his picture in the Daily Telegraph.

But one night, he produced for mum,

in the kitchen with us kids in bed,

a beermat signed by Steve McQueen

allegedly, and quite illegibly.

He had met his hero in a Kettering pub,

he said, at Steve McQueen's request,

to talk about their mutual love of bikes.

This was when the old man edited

a famous motorcycle magazine.

But the King of Cool had set a precondition

on their meeting: Dad mustn’t breathe a word.

He had come down not as a superstar

but as a normal guy, as a fan; in fact,

Steve asked him for his squiggle first.

The old man then requested Steve’s,

but only because it embarrassed him

that Bullitt had even wanted his.

Such protestations of humility

make the story sound like a pack of lies

to me. And now the beermat’s gone

so the squiggle can’t be verified.

My mother lost it the day she heard

that the old man had another woman.

A convenient case of carelessness

in somebody whose mind was sharp

as razor wire when it had to be.

Bruce Hodder lives in Northampton, England. His work has appeared in many magazines. This year his poetry collection ‘The Journey Home’ was published by Whiskey City Press.