This is mine for today.

Lunch at the Cheesecake Factory

Not every place is a good space to write.  Sometimes the nibbling mice are too loud.  Sometimes it’s the plants gossiping.  I can’t hear the words coming down the steps unless they prance.  Their echo says hello three times while the salad sits there and gets cold.  Too often lonely means not alone.  I’ve forgotten the secret to the sauce, it’s lost its tang and cranberries keep the dark mysteries of the wet bog to themselves, hiding from Maine tourists dressed in high boots and thin tops, trying to track it all down.  But almost doesn’t count and the ocean seals still look like turtles peeking over the top of the wavelets to the untrained eye.

On the table the radishes tell stories to each other, the bread is in mourning for yellow sun and its stalky brothers and sisters and I swear to you the water is being biblical, otherwise why would I  be saying pepper, lemon, cheesecake?  The fork has poked the truth full of holes, the knife sliced it into quarter moons.  The server smiles and bows, touches her toes, twirls to music audible only to the fly dancing around my head.  We’re both buzzed.  Stay long enough and even the sauce’s secret will join us, signaling the waiter, ordering sorrow with something spicy on the side to burn the tongue, giving the eyes a good reason to tear.

**

Yesterday and today, the poems came to me after reading Meghan Privitello’s chapbook, “A New Language for Falling Out of Love.” Here is a piece of one of the shorter ones:

Memory:  The Servent

When evaluating the difference between memory as a ruler and memory as an onion, pay attention to the onion’s green shoots.  Do not measure your happiness in haste.  Your onion memory makes me cry bitter milk when I cut it through.  Wasteful, the voice of dull knives.  Rarely, I remember you through the latex of a blue balloon and you become a scene from a silent film.

**

I know these aren’t for everyone.  Some of them aren’t for me.  But I love the way they make me feel when I read them.  Delicious.  As if I’m overhearing a coded message and it’s mine to figure out.  So of course I have to have a go at it for better or for worse.  And I’ve ordered another 3 prose poets’ chapbooks.  It may be a wild ride for a while!