The poem struck me as bartender's wisdom, like a little nugget of truth. I just imagined this guy walking into the bar. He's kind of, like, this soggy mess and hopeless. And the bartender's, like, “Buck up, it'll be OK.”

The rest of the image comes from different places. Like the colors—
I usually get colors from things I see, from things that pop out. The man's jacket—
that's pretty much my jacket. It's an old, ugly yellow jacket. But I love the color, so I use it in as many things as I can.

Maybe because of Syracuse, I'm getting to like these really pale, washed out colors—
this cloudy day pallet. Bright colors are just too abrasive. They almost hurt.