Maybe I slide the cork from the bottle
and a song begins
like the first sun of summer.
Ripples through my skin.
Makes me lie down in warm water.
Maybe I bring it to my lips
and a minor chord
makes me march to the Broadway Bridge,
grip the railing and beg
the moon, full as a grape.
The wine’s a risk
I’ll have to take. Every day
learning how little I know,
how young and afraid.
Just think of the muscles
required to say mortgage.
How casually people speak
these panicked incantations,
as if they’ll never die.
The truth is, I’m not young at all.
In another country, in another time,
I’d be more than half expired.
An afternoon. A papery urn
and two orbs of desiccating eggs.
When you think of it that way,
don’t I deserve another drink?
Come, Boy. Bring your bottle,
bat your lashes, show me that smile
you’ve practiced with all your teeth.
The night is a vascular bundle
sealed in tight skin.
The world a vineyard of blue
chandeliers. There’s no telling
what will take hold of the vine
once the music begins.
LISA WELLSis a poet and essayist from Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in The Iowa Review, Best New Poets, The Believer, Denver Quarterly, The Rumpus, Third Coast, and elsewhere. A book of nonfiction is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2019. She lives in Tucson, Arizona.
