Texas Man Slain by Champagne Cork

Woods Nash

The danger was not the restless

gator he cradled around Jake’s

Liquor, drunk and merry down the

aisles, twin black pearls of reptile

eyes, or the category 4 roiling the

gulf as bottles jittered in his cart,

or the store clerk’s finger on a trigger,

or the engine idling in the lot— his

pickup waiting to whisk them off to

the party where a weightless cork

would pop and strike his temple.

About the Author

Woods Nash is Assistant Professor of Bioethics and Medical Humanities at the Fertitta Family College of Medicine, University of Houston. His poems and essays have been published by the Bellevue Literary Review, Journal of the American Medical Association, Louisville Review, Academic Medicine, Journal of Medical Humanities, and elsewhere. He serves as co-chair of Off Script: Stories from the Heart of Medicine, a twice-annual medical storytelling event that has been hosted by numerous venues in Houston, Texas.

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