Eating & Drinking

Ventura because she was hungry and because
She was curious — but more because she was curious —
Took the dare, a kiss for a pomegranate.
Everyone gathered, her friends and his. Everyone
Watched: the boys, the girls, the pigs and the chickens,
And more. Moving to the front were the children
She and Clemente would one day have,
And the children of those children, too,
Gathered and loud with everyone and everything else,
Loud as the pigs and fast as the chickens
Though she could not see them.

Breakfast, and I’ m eating plain yogurt, figs from my garden, and honey.
I’ m sitting in a lawn chair on the backyard patio —

life is good, and the sunlight warming my lap and the pages
of a book remind me of Tucson

and the subterranean apartment I rented alone and far from home.
There was a sofa in front of my one window

where at noon the sun burned briefly on the cushions as starlings
stirred in the trees with their admonishments.

Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest —
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest —
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

Why do we bother with the rest of the day,
the swale of the afternoon,
the sudden dip into evening,

then night with his notorious perfumes,
his many-pointed stars?

This is the best —
throwing off the light covers,
feet on the cold floor,
and buzzing around the house on espresso —

maybe a splash of water on the face,
a palmful of vitamins —
but mostly buzzing around the house on espresso,

dictionary and atlas open on the rug,
the typewriter waiting for the key of the head,
a cello on the radio,

my dad's going to give me a self
back.
i've made an altar called
The Altar for Healing the Father & Child,
& asked him what i could do
for him so he would
do nice for me. he said i should stop
saying bad things about him &, since
i've said just about everything bad
i can think of &, since... well,
no, i change my
mind, i can't promise
him that. but even healing is
negotiable, so, if he's in
heaven (or trying
to get in), it wouldn't hurt

I couldn't have waited. By the time you return
it would have rotted on the vine.
So I cut the first tomato into eighths,
salted the pieces in the dusk
and found the flesh not mealy (like last year's)
or bitter,
even when I swallowed the green crown of the stem
that made my throat feel dusty and warm.

The gregarious dark is shifting
when she puts her second drink,
the free one, half on the coaster.
The tipped wine poised at the brim
is the beginning of the bad girl
she’ ll promise never to be again
tomorrow, who can taunt him now
to prove he doesn’ t love her
and never could: her hand slides

Thanks, Ray, this is just what the doctor ordered.

No, you never see me have one with olives — your father likes
olives but I can’ t stand them.

No, cocktail onions are just picked small. Turn that down, Dan.

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