May 30, 2023

what we want but don’t say

A trip to Portugal, with time to count the cobblestones, sip from beveled glasses
at a restaurant run by a woman who calls us chuchu. The agile legs of new poems, 
running past the tollbooth cameras aimed to thwart their passage. Potato chips, speckled
with dried chives and a dust of artificial sour cream, in front of that movie that made us
fall in love with anti-heroes. The winning points on the scoreboard we stuff in pockets 
of memory, striped bands of tube socks still snug on our calves. Potential, that slippery eel
beckoning from every backstage of our lives. Pompoms for our efforts. Portholes to 
the future. Polymorphic bodies to travel in the multiple way of our minds. The perfect 
poached egg. An infinity pool. For the man we called “Poppa” to come back. For the polar
ice caps to reverse their course. For what is alive in us to find the podium, and speak.