is singing “A Sunday Kind of Love”
under our window,
toneless as a mule,
rolling each r in her native Cuban,
a wild hum of drums.

It is Saturday,
and already I hate
her arrogant snub of time, the way
she holds the word “love”
in her throat like a life-vest.

I walk to the sink,
gather two of our heaviest pots
and man the screen like a sharp-shooter,
daring her to the refrain.
You are amused, invite her
for supper.
She’s upstairs in a knee-
jerk, as if with the tall loom
of your voice she could levitate,
grow wings.

At our table
She sits, docile
as a dove, and handles
her iced tea as if it were a gift, reels
the week’s events in a violent sputtering
of lips: a man found in the sewer
unscathed, the heat wave
that’s claimed life
every year since ’89.
I snarl into my frijoles negros,
(your request: to make her feel
more comfortable),
though in my thigh, the stray poke
of chair.

Hot and unhinged,
I bang the kitchen hapless,
swatting the stove with spatula,
denting the oven’s
metal back.

She rises as if charmed,
joins; rips the toaster
from its oily plug, stabs her spiked
pump into the tile, decapitates
the blender.

Soon, we are both wet
with frenzy. You smile

from your place
at the table’s head,
grip your gin with all the gloat
of a general,
kick-back:
“Oh ladies,” you say,
“Oh girls.”
§ § §

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This piece was first published in INK POT #4- 2004, a literary journal.

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