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Thunder Sandwich #23 |
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Craig Kirchner |
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After Dinner It's tight at our table, unknown parts of the same group, face to face and she wants to teach me to drink Cognac. The waiter brings snifters and a bottle, she mulls it over hot tea - sets the pear-shaped bottom on its side pours like 'time has stopped' slowly the amber liquid into the heated glass. Small deft hands stroke the aged decanter as warm zephyrs intoxicate the narrowing space between us. "Sip and swirl, don't swallow, let it slide down your tongue, ease into your throat. You have to get past the alcohol and taste the fruit. Great tasters can tell the grape, the region, the exact plot of ground." My ground is sinking around me, my face and limbs like embers as the slick silk glides as she has instructed, .. and then she does hers.. the French would be proud. She circles the rim of the glass, discovers a drop of the nectar, with the slightest of smiles and mink eyes stuck to mine, puts her finger to my lips and asks me again to taste the fruit. Neonpoem Throw away your mascara, mousse and underwear. Wear these lines for a week, just one week, not a long time. Let the words mold your face, drape your shoulders, delicate breasts. Let the lyric infuse your dreams, scent your pillows, press your thighs with invisible weight. At the end of the week if these Emperor's clothes are your neonpoem, call me. I'll be here on hold, won't have eaten, but won't rewrite. You are new ink that will not dry. Voyeur Skylines bogie down quickly, clouds rush by like Cossacks - there is a funeral, there is jazz. Bourbon Street swells appropriately for a local musician has died, the porches above the streets are full of revelry and beads. The procession flows like Owsley's acid from gutter to neon gutter, the dancing surreal, the colors pinwheel. I'm tourist, not a mourner really though I did like his music. It occurs most funerals are earlier in the day. He apparently loved dusk, a jazz time of day, and friends partying as skylines fade. I wonder when the wake will end, the next begin, at the wine-aged sax, the skyline, his dusk, the passion rising primal from the streets, the sexual heat from his entourage as skylines bogie down quickly. |