Assassination of a Critic

“Rhymes in poems are dead,” he said.
I laughed and shouldered the bazooka, shook a
Vicodin from the bottle and chased it with gin.
(Now I’m all-in, you dig?)
The room started to spin.
I grabbed the mantle like Mickey Mantle
grabbing a bat. I put on my square-jaw look:
me and the fireplace, burning.
Turning to my antagonist—
an academic herbalist with a cyst above his brow—
I figured the time was now.
I sighted the cyst and cocked the trigger.
“Rhymes ain’t dead, buddy boy,” I said.
“You are.”