ALL RESPONSES |
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Pere-Lachaise,
where you disrobed
before the grave of Isadora Duncan.
Astonished onlookers asked
if you were drunk.
No, I said,
It was the coffee. |
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sleepless
driving around
with poetry in his head
visiting an all-night
coffee shop
where he sits
alone writing
a bohemian waitress
serves his energizing brew
she has a tree tattooed
at the base of her neck
with a flirtatious smile
he points
and asks her
what it means
she says
"it's a secret."
he wants to know how
far down her back it goes
and blushes at his
impropriety when she says...
"not far."
he's drawn to city lights
because his only waking hours
are in the deep of night
he contemplates
if he is
a good enough
father and husband
he's a poet
with a hunger
that begs to be fed
why doesn't he sleep
because he doesn't want to
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At first, hot coffee sipped in remembered rhythm
softens old wounds.
Later, smiles show their teeth
when it’s time for refills.
Banana pie by the forkful
Mourns a shinier day.
When cups are drained
she leaves the tip, he pays the bill.
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a true Wisconsin cafe serves late
evening Friday fish fry to an oblique collection
of customers who eventually leave
with filleted prayers on their greased lips
and brown batter crumbs
caught in faded denim pants cuffs
tarter sauce: yellow mayonnaise,
diced dill relish, a short kick of horseradish
all blend with thick cigarette smoke
and coffee in conversations needing no reply
a big place, this world outside
but inside a true Wisconsin cafe
is like being dropped off by a bus driver
at an unscheduled stop just because
you asked nicely |
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For the longest time it was a wives' tale
that coffee stunted one's growth as did
reading the Sunday wantads. I used to be
six feet exactly, shrunk to 5'10. Not a day
goes by when I don't grind the beans,
brew the elixer and comb the pet section
in the StarTrib. Today a husbands' tale
suggests Sanka. |
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A white cup the color of half and half
sat in the farm man's hand
tinted like coffee teeth
why do I drink this?
irrevocable thoughts-sipped-
an absence of sadness-of origin
taste the quotidian portent?
no
it's just your past again.
the dirty soil and
the way it rained
while inside the silent barn
don't fear the percolator of lucidity
just fear the
f
i
l
t
e
r
I've outlived all my bitter enemies |
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I would like to be the coffee in your cup. I would like
to warm your hands, quicken your blood. I would like
to know what it feels like to swim through your veins,
to travel you from middle to end. I would like to be what
you crave, your first thought each morning; that simple,
pure & indispensable, that kind of heat.
I would let you grind me, press me,
turn me to powder. I would let you
pour boiling water all over my body.
I would let it soak in, let it extract all
the good in me, for you. Just let
me linger on your tongue, sip me
slow, enjoy every ounce. Just
promise you’ll want me
tomorrow.
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This coffee is weak and acidic.
I can't live like this.
And it varies from day-to-day
depending on who's working.
So I'll make it myself from now on.
1 heaping tablespoon/cup of water
the way nature intended. |
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After the morning pancake rush
Maple and blueberry syrup slowing drying
on the vinyl booth seats, laminated menus
and the run in my nylons
but before the dinner crowd
Ketchup on the table, the smell of burgers
grilling, chicken in the deep fat
pies promenading, spinning
in refrigerated case
Blueberry, Apple, Grasshopper
and Black Bottom
as lovely as beauty queens
Come the liver brothers.
Two ancient men, gray skinned,
thinning hair dyed black, olive suits
that looked like they sat in the sun
too long, smelling of moth balls
and shoe polish.
The liver brothers
so thin like chicken bones
after the meat and skin
have been removed.
Every Sunday they came
for the flat, dry liver and onion
special, with a soft baked potato
wrapped in foil and a salad
on the side.
They whittled away their meat
chewing each piece a hundred times,
once for each year they'd lived.
Remembering the games of marbles,
the sermons, the wars, the wives
they'd outlasted.
Chewing chewing, barely touching
their salad with Russian dressing,
sipping their coffee black
needing a few warm it up pours.
Saying nothing.
A nod for the check and another nod
as they shuffled out, stirring the air
that smelled like deep fried cigarette
smoke and sugared pancakes.
And for a moment
the mothball shoe polish smell
of them hangs in the air.
By the time the table is cleared--
plates stacked and cups emptied,
the three quarters that were tucked
under the edge of the salad plate
jingling in my pocket, only the smell
of grease and table cleaner remains.
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The Coffeehouse
has a long and milky-brown past.
Think back to cafes in Paris, Prague,
newspapers hung over racks;
no non-smoking sections then. Think
farther back, to Leipzig and old Bach,
his four daughters tripping across
the footbridge to Zimmermann’s,
the coffeehouse for music lovers,
a room with tables, chairs and clavichords.
The girls jumped for a chance to play,
to show off. They’re worth a poem.
(And, Folks, I’ve got it in my pocket.)
Think Vienna, New York, St. Paul,
for heaven’s sake, don’t forget Istanbul.
Think the Depot in Mobridge, South Dakota,
people on the way, going nowhere,
“a la gare” as the French say, people
tired and thirsty, wanting a jolt.
Think of the stories in those coffeedrinkers’
lives. In and out the door they go. Some
get told, others steam away into silence.
Strange we come to the cafe as refuge,
when all the spirits of our strangers
pound around us, throbbing to be heard.
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kona, Jamaican Blue Mountain, Americano
Long Black, even, i suppose, Kopi Luwak
ever since the tenth century, when Ethiopian goats
first danced with caffeine after sampling the red beans,
and bearded herders followed, stimulating
late night bones
from Yemen northward to Mecca and Medina,
across centuries of stained European tables,
all the way to my father’s Wisconsin
Saturday morning gas stove
steel percolator in 1965
he in our dimly lit kitchen, sports page
and coffee, a vision of ambidextrous dexterity
mother enters morning warm and richly bitter
from a late evening spat / father wiping steam
from his lenses, inhales
her rockingchair walk, catches his breath
when her pendulum pauses
eventually they both leave,
whispering to each other “wait,
wait” down their hallway of wanting
i eat my corn flakes in wonder
while father’s coffee cools in his blue
Milwaukee Braves mug |
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My cell-cluster brain parses flourescent images, howling echoes from hooked cousins.
Their cries for help touch me. Should I torpedo towards danger, risking predatory onslaught,
our numbers overwhelming ravenous monsters?
Death, glassy-eyed and cold, like so many I know, once alive, until I took your life,
until I dangled what you love before you. We can be friends, now that we have this...understanding... that you are my meal.
Walleye on Upper Red Lake, Waskish, sun coming out on a frozen lake, sacrifice of minnow, Vexilar, in bucket of snow,
Wife, sleeping fried egg on paper plate in Minnesota fish house, walking shirtless on frozen lake
Wind, on gray clouds above distant lake treeline, ink freezes more quickly than blood
Flat tire on ice, blood, fishgut smell, urine changing colors, Red Lake, white rectangle window facing west
Jar of olives, peppers, tackle, keys, distant country radio station, beer and vodka
Shiny lures
Bobbers
Hooks
Black crows and eagles eating fish guts, rod and reel, stick and sinker, undressing fish
Discipline, commitment, smoked fish, sensitive eyes connected by optic nerve cable to libraries of erotic intellect, and hot
black coffee. |
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spelled backwards is EFAC.
Is that a Turkish word? Maybe
if spelled with a K, as in Kaffé—
EFAK. (Turks hang out in
tea-houses, anyway.) Anagram,
FACE—best faced with a mug
of caffee before you face
the mirror, or the day.
ECFA—that's a Trade Guild,
or a village in Azerbayjan.
And AFCÉ would be sexy
as Egyptian myth. Brown and
steaming in a little bronze jug.
Goddess of poets and all
without money for food.
That guy Jesus came in,
(Where does he live, anyway?)
Drank his cup of Arabica
black, and left. Bit odd,
if you ask me. Said he wants
to rent the upper room for
about fourteen people, on
Wednesday. Bringing their
own food. Wine please,
no coffee. |
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Here, by the sliver of satin left in you,
there are statements of love and of virtue, but
when I smile you turn ardently casual
as if “we” is a four letter word;
“Why the sun?” I ask slowly, as your beams
cast a shadow.
“Here and now.” you state as if the glass of
the window, fragmented,
has pierc’ed your heart, in shards,
in the recesses that I once thought were ours.
Here, by our cups of Literary folly--too
many wars raging all through our bodies--you
hold to an oh so holy
scene--that which you glean from theory--
a dream. One of blotches that have never been.
One of calm Post-Modern Avenue, where the pimps
once played, one of NO, one of, “I
am the same.” Here love, here.
Hold my hand for a moment and
look out to the street. The Eighties have
passed us. The children have moved
to a community no where near us, and we
have each other. That is all
that is left--get
your head off your chest; we
still live, love to breathe, need to be.
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I saw a man sticking up posters
on the odd side of town.
the papers read,
“Play In Progress, One
That YOU Cannot Afford,” but
my word those posters were beautiful;
and I tore
one
down to take back to my room,
and plastered it on the wall
across from the foot of my bed
so that I could see
it just as my eyes
made that last, lazy bump
before sleep--
so that its bright fervor
could dance
in my dreams. and
there was no taunt
that could put out the paints
of those dreams, they spun
round in circles, with
their arms out, laughing
like pups, young, incandescent
and even charming; when
I woke, I never woke. even
though we, my family, were poor
and a city away from the stage, even
though we could not read
the books
where those dreams were
conceived, even though
our bedrooms were cold, and
our wintered quilts so thick
that the designs of their stitching
spoke with the weight
of snakes, even though we
were fast approaching an age
where inadequacies would become apparent and
still nothing could be done--we
were happy, poor but happy; my mother
told me, before I went to bed,
that angels stalked within my shadows,
killing off the ill wishes of other
creatures, making them wander
at least; she, my mother, told me
once the lights were out
the world disappeared, and
my bed hovered in the clouds
of stars that I had seen
in pictures. fear was nothing,
until I grew older, fear was nothing.
and love within our walls was
quilted, painted, posted on the refrigerator
as if priceless--because it is
priceless, youth
I mean; if we are lucky the last bit
sucks back in the soul
and becomes a pearl, before we are dead.
mother’s words, like the shake
of ceremony, a rattle, telling
us the wishes of old and young alike,
were enough
to give my vagrant breath
a voice--my dreams a tone; I
was so young, so true, so loud
that the stars bent down
to see
what was the commotion--spent
the night huddled in my brainpan--lit
a stage
that no rich world could ever see;
but my mother did
see the lip-curled snort smile of me sleeping,
huddled in bed, living
as if perfection could be.
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i sit at the bar
or at the table by the window
depending upon my mood
i hold a light conversation
with a local printer
and a guy who plows
driveways
brian, an artist
who's always smiling
(and so far off center
i wonder if he's high)
walks in and
announces to the patrons
how wonderful he thinks i am
i blush and secretly
wish i could dissolve
as he steals my earphones
to listen in
he has no understanding
of my barriers
when i rise to leave
he spins me around to dance
the music only in his head
i can't help but laugh |
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In a coffeehouse such as this one,
the world is heady with possibilities and choices.
Swallowing a dose of warm, rich night,
I do not think about dying.
Nor do I worry about how poorly I breathed
today in the cold outside air.
I don’t think of how my bonesack mother
in the hospital begged us to let her go
or the babies I’ve named and lost or how my departed
father came back in a dream last night, living
in a shack in the middle of a grassland
where he ate king mackerel for breakfast.
He said he’d been there all along, I just hadn’t noticed.
And I don’t think of Julia, gone for some years now,
Julia dancing in light, her muscles like a stallion
defined and rippling as water ranging
its way around rocks is unbreakable.
Words like destiny, mercy and despair have no power
in light of this prodigal winter sun pealing back clouds
to sneek through the window and touch my table,
because I have loved.
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in response to I Said Coffee by Sharmagne Leland-St. John
Your throat closed
for an instant,
forcing out o
through c of rounded lips,
tongue curled,
teeth squeezed
against lower lip -f,
opening for e.
Did you feel mouth
moving to words?
I felt hands on chest,
fingers probing flesh,
stretched over muscle,
warm breath in ear,
spun hair 'cross cheek,
lavender filling,
drowning everything.
Bitter black handshakes,
forced smiles,
business, small talk
were nowhere in you.
What did you say? |
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i sit between coffee pot & cup (two
fragments) one an accusation
the other laughter
i chew my fingernails (a war
of Solitude) waiting for pleasure
i sit between my visions (one
before) the other ever after
i conspire to murder
the moon (the first person
of witness) only a tourist
one evening at a time
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I said coffee
I didn't say,
"would you
like to cup
my warm
soft breasts
in your
un-calloused,
long,
tapered,
ring less fingered
hands?"
I said coffee
I didn't say,
"would you
like to
run your tongue
along my neck
just below
my left ear-lobe?"
I said coffee
I didn't say,
"would you
like to
hold me
in your arms
and feel my heart
skip beats
as you press your
hard, lean body
up against mine
until I melt
into you
with desire?"
I said coffee
as we stood there
in the jasmine
scented night
my car door
like some modern day
bundling board
separating us,
protecting us
from ourselves
and lust
I said,
"would you
like to go for
a cup of coffee?"
I didn't say,
"would you
like to brush
your lips
across mine
as you move
silently
to bury your face
in my long, silky,
raven black hair?"
But you said,
"I can't
I'm married
I can't trust myself
to be alone
with you."
So I looked you
dead in the eye
and repeated
"I said coffee"
Note from Britt: Sharmagne received a Pushcart nomination for this poem, and I am happy to see it posted here. I felt is was a perfect piece to write a response to -- please feel free to do the same.
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What are saying
with those soft vowels,
those hard consonants all love-blind,
yet quiet?
i need, please, an opening, something
like your lips or another secret
What are you doing touching me
with your left hand like a child
when your house is on fire,
your double sink is full of dishes,
and me just standing there with soap
in my hands
i hear “coffee” all the while
imaging what it was like for you
the first time upstairs in a bedroom
with a boy at your breast,
whispering adult things
from a squeaky voice: jesus
All i want to do is play
for an evening
not marry you, not even
for a cup of Columbian coffee |
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