surrender
The spilled wine spreads to the edge of my napkin
over the course of our dinner. After the second bottle,
I confess that my wife has thirteen ribs.
On the third bottle, we compare traumas.
The gay waiter interrupts
with the indifference of a Greek chorus:
'our most popular sin is the chocolate souffl'.
An hour later, my red napkin could pass
for a thin sheet of venison tartar.
The waiter pours two flutes of Kir Royal
then impatiently stacks the chairs behind us.
You lean back as if you were Isaac
anticipating his father's judgement
and we are both in that drunken, beatific state
that makes any room sacred.
one metaphor
twenty winters from now you'll still be divining profundities from copulation and I'll still be mining my family secrets for that one metaphor that will inexplicably explain my childhood
there's so little poetry in the reality that we can't write our failings into a good life, or be thankful our compulsions move us any closer toward truth
in Japan, a bird alights on a branch outside your window and inspires a hundred tankas or it simply wings over your house, unnoticed