Poker Alice by John McPherson

Poker Alice smoked cigars and wore the latest fashions,

but playing poker with the guys became her cardinal passion.

She got her start in Leadville in its early roughshod days,

watching while her husband played in a gin mill’s smoky haze.

She didn’t smile or roll her eyes as trollops sometimes do;

her poker face became her ace as her reputation grew.

An explosion took her husband so she had to make it on her own.

She had the flair so a dealer’s chair became her earthly throne.

When the mining frayed she plied her trade in Creede and other places,

where she met Bob Ford among the hoard of famous western faces.

Then Deadwood called and off she hauled to the land of the Lakota

to settle down in the frontier town of Sturgis, South Dakota.

Her claim to fame might be the name she made in Silver City—

when she won 6K in a single day and left there sitting pretty.

She held her own in a game that’s known to be a man’s affair,

and outlived three that came to be one-half a wedded pair.

At seventy-nine it came her time to fold her cards and pass,

but she left behind a life defined by grit, and nerve, and brass.