Eight Ball

By Claudia Emerson

“It was fifty cents a game

Beneath exhausted ceiling fans,

The smoke’s old spiral. Hooded lights

Burned distant, dull. I was tired, but you

Insisted on one more, so I chalked 

the cue—the bored blue—broke, 

      scratched.

   It was always possible

for you to run the table, leave me

Nothing. But I recall the easy,

shot you missed, and then the way

We both studied, circling— keeping 

what you had left me between us”

I think that eight ball on the surface is talking about a game of pool in maybe a bar or something like that. And from what I can tell the person that the author is playing against is better than them but they missed an easy shot that could’ve been made and they both questioned that decision. And the final line “what you had left me between us” makes me think that the opponent missed the easy shot on purpose. 

Something I noticed was the language the author used in describing the location gave off a feeling of dreariness. Like exhausted, hooded, dull, bored gives the reader a feeling that the location is old and the lights flicker gives imagery of an old place and with that dreariness, it also gives the poem a similar feeling of drag.