Tending Bar at Circa
on any Given Tuesday Night

Guy on the end asks, am I
a visual learner—and what I say
turns out to be true: it depends
on what he's about to show me.
He hands me an acronym:
Ian—It’s A Name.
So you won’t forget, he says.
He's making a list of women
he's flirted with this week.
Cross me off, I say,
so he won't forget: I’m getting paid.

Matt broke up with Rose again.
I keep serving him
because he works here;
but now he’s giving me the eye.
Dear Matt, stop the staring.
It makes me uncomfortable in my
workplace even though
it doesn’t—but I can't wait to see
what happens in the morning
when he’s required by law
to reprimand himself.
The women on the end complain:
we don’t have happy hour.
They order according to what's funny—
Whistling Pig, Moose Drool,
and skewer the husbands, who don’t
make enough money, and never
forget to forget the trash.
Monty and his fiancé joke
in ultimatums: buy me more wine,
throw out that shirt, take me to Paris
or the wedding’s off—
feels like it won't be long
before someone’s just kidding
isn’t funny, Valentine.

Lost and Found

My younger father wasted his inheritance,
drove a convertible while standing

for the national anthem—baptized then
in the cloying damp

night of a DC summer, free at last
from the consequence of his mother’s

most recent drink. And later, immersed in this
bible, this blessing—given faith

enough to make a missionary
from a boy, bring him into the white

Wyoming snow—to have and to heal,
to hold what covenants abide

in each translucent verse. Decades
later, in spite of thou shalt not, I stole

my father's bible, seeking a miracle
within the redolent scent of my second-grade

Sundays: wanting a scene like Patty Duke
in a flood of well-water, w’s wrapped in a fist

and joy pouring down like a forty-night rain;
wanting my prayers to ascend like manna

returning to heaven, a reward
for this thieving kind of love.

Living Alone

--Charles Bukowski, from “Trapped”

At lunch with Charles Bukowski
I order a Pellegrino; Hank brings several
bottles of something red, and delicious.
It’s not just you, I say. About the mannequins,
I mean. The reason I go back
to work in the afternoon
is three identical men made in the image
of a man made in the image of a god
without a head or arms;
the way cashmere comes to life
sliding the sleek black line from shoulder
to hip; the rapture of silk
in the break of a trouser leg;
the way my cheekbone rests
against a shoulder blade, right breast
finding home in the valley of a backbone groove
as I snap, zip, straighten, and smooth.
People gather in ones outside the plate glass,
lean into the Pygmalion promise
of taste and touch, the exquisite ritual
of button and buckle. The closeness of this
body if I close my eyes is nearly
close enough, designed like all
mankind to leave us
both comforted and wanting.

Stingrays

Uncombed and smelling of sleep, we rise
and stumble to brunch, dizzy in the mist
of ordinary things magnified by dividing
by two: pillow, shower, omelette, and
toast which cannot be compromised, so both
sourdough and rye arrive as I start
at the unfamiliar familiarity of a hand
tracing the line of my bare shoulder.

A look behind reveals no one
but you, the touch I don't yet recognize;
your sleeve against my skin, the wrist
and fingers I found finding me
in the warm and humid dark.
How long does a body take to become
unsurprised, to lean into, let itself
sink beneath the salted blue, kneel
on a sandbar, palms held open
under a sacrifice of squid: a deliberate
attempt to summon stingrays.

Guided by scent, they glide
on the lithe underside of wings.
Brush of a body strange and white
along the back of my neck, languorous
caress across my thigh is eerily soft,
until the vacuum of a mouth
misinterprets its own intention, latches on
to what it hopes is food, and pulls
with a force perfected by centuries
of survival. Release comes only after
the blood rises and seeps, leaves
a bruise, black and bewildered
to settle in the flesh for months.