David Spicer- A Poem

CINDERS                                          

 

After I ate a fortune cookie

in a Wyoming restaurant, I read its

prediction: You will never know

the thrill of a busboy. What, is this

a lavish joke? Should I commit

suicide by pills, a bayonet in my

throat, or hack government

web sites and suffer in limbo?

I stole the chopsticks for a souvenir

and called my ex-lover’s husband:

Blink and then stare before you endear

yourself to her, consign yourself

to the pickle factory. I hung up, wired

five dozen roses and a wind chime.

I wonder if humanity forgives itself

for the Holocaust. It shouldn’t.

I wonder if my lover decrypted

the missive. She was a Serbian nanny

without shame who warned my children

about the evils of oil and glue.

Fluttered her eyelashes, made me

kneel in the burning desert. I remember

her power, never forgot it in my hunt.

Soldiers couldn’t track her. She warned

me I had committed an error,

I know I rubbed her the wrong way.

I can’t believe I didn’t check her out.

I can’t believe my dreams are cinders.