“Friday Night” by Danil Rudoy is a Fall 2009 poem from Love Is Poetry. Seven quatrains and a final tercet turn gambling language, direct address, repetition, death and ash into a compressed meditation on chance and mortality.
Friday Night
Dim light,
Ash-tray:
To-night
We play.
The stake
Is high:
You fake –
You die.
The die
Is cast.
You try
And last!
The card
Is dealt.
You guard
Your pelt!
The wheel
Is spun…
I feel:
I won!
Don’t cry,
Don’t grieve:
You die
And leave.
Your soul
Burns fast
Like coal
Or dust.
th’ash-tray’s
now full of clay
dead cool.
Fall 2009
Publication
“Friday Night” appears in Love Is Poetry: Rhyming Poems About Love Life, in The City Dark.
Chance and mortality
The poem moves through the objects and formulas of a game: stake, die, card and wheel. Each stage compresses risk into a few monosyllables, while the repeated word “die” gives the language of chance an increasingly literal pressure. The speaker’s cry of victory arrives before the addressee’s death and departure.
The final tercet strips the game down to residue. Ash, clay and coldness replace motion and suspense. The shortened ending gives mortality the last word after the wheel has stopped.
Critical reading
A detailed critical reading of “Friday Night” on Prose & Poetry follows the gambling imagery, repeated death-language, short-line form, rhyme, direct address, memento-mori pressure and final ash-and-clay image.
Related reading
Continue with My Farewell, Death of Desire, Poetry by Danil Rudoy, and Rhyming Poetry.
Text and citation
Copyright © Danil Rudoy. The poem is published here as the author’s canonical text. Short excerpts may be quoted for criticism, scholarship, teaching and literary discussion with attribution to Danil Rudoy and a link to this page. Full reproduction requires separate permission.