August 13, 2024

Note: This poem includes a number of words from a list of 40 wine descriptions.

seeking

She wanted to love the jazz club, feel a buttery
affection for anyone who, in an online profile, 
used elegant adjectives to describe the kind 
of person they were looking for. In the ten
photographs allotted, four were spent on a charcoal 
terrier amidst a backdrop of flamboyant nature scenes:
a dense cluster of redwoods, somewhere 
in Colorado with a crisp, autumnal view 
of the Flatirons, a Napa Valley barnyard 
foregrounded by two robust pigs. It was 
all there—the deep, earthy wale of corduroys, 
the tousled, peppery hair, the clean teeth
in the fifth shot, a selfie taken in the middle
of a field of fat sunflowers. But walking in, 
the lighting was all wrong, the seating austerely distant
from the stage, where a complex drum set
was being assembled by an angular, sullen-faced roadie.
She was early and ordered a gin Gimlet from the bar.
It was weak, too jammy somehow, the lime absent,
so when she saw the figure entering, it was possible
the fleshy intrigue and goosepimpled optimism 
that emboldened her cursor two nights before
had already lost their juice. It was merely
the opening act. Once they introduced themselves
and shook hands, it took less than five minutes  
to feel an old acidity return, her heart puckering
in a sour wave of disappointment that turned unctuous
with a second Gimlet. She couldn’t have explained the reason
the engine sputtered, or how a steely wind so quickly dislodged
the moorings of her hope, but by the time the long, wobbly 
wail of the trombonist muscled through the middle of “Lonesome 
Old Town,” she had already balled up her coat in her lap, 
eyes shifty on the exit neon, gathering up 
the bright lie that would bridge her escape 
and deliver her to the oaky maw of her anonymous city,
where every face she encountered seemed to be swimming
with the current. Still, it was better to be lost than 
lying. Her goodbye was half-lidded; there were no promises
for a future mimosa. She slid from the frame as the second band
was tuning up. Outside, a velvety fog had coalesced. The bus was 
nowhere near. The streetlights flickered like wet minerals.
She started walking.