Rosé
“I feel sorry for you, kid,”
his student said. “I could
not live without wine.”
“What does it feel like?”
he asked, half curious, half
wise. “It relaxes me like
warmth relaxes ice.”
There’s much to thaw here.
Why a college freshman
calls her math professor
kid. Why this makes the
professor’s husband
think of The Importance of
Being Earnest. Why they
are talking about booze
instead of calculus — or
are they hoping to find a
more elegant statement of
the calculus of booze?
Maybe she came to class
hungover. Maybe it came
out that he’s a teetotaler
from vanity or for math’s
sake. I’ll ask him later. Now
I want to think about the
toxins (Brexit, in-laws, the
Board of Regents) he can’t
or won’t avoid, toxins that
his unhappy enzymes boil
to vinegar. I want to wonder
why I’m the sole blight he
swallows with delight. Just
once I want blood to flood
his cheeks — the Red Drake,
the Communist Flag, the
Land of the Rising Sun
rising to his surface like
fish in a dynamited lake.
Round 1
I know from the way he
is listening, he thinks
our kiss sounds like
scissors eating a path
through an enormous post-
card, or a woman tuning a
ukulele (thinking: I’m
twisting its ears) while a
man deciding whether to
smoke his fingers writes
on the card in tired pencil,
with spelling mistakes I will
correct: Now Masa has
seen me naked, fetal,
on the floor digging for
my courage with a digit. His
face withdraws slowly from
mine. He is looking at
me as though he thinks
the card is real and
can’t imagine anyone
sending such mail and
is sure I am the sender.
Second Generation
Once, when Mike’s agoraphobia
was sleeping, we walked here
together. “We’re like my
folks now before old age made
Mom’s flat feet mean.” The
crew that was re-siding the
complex had left stacks of long
gray wobbly strips, sawhorses
and quiet. Walkers on a planet that
would feel no more landings,
by accident, we pierced some-
thing. A text came in from space
and I pointed out: She spells
talk: take and walk: wake.