I read a poem by A.C.
in The New Yorker.
It has to be good, it’s published
in The New Yorker, I love The New Yorker.
—What’s more
emblematic of having arrived?
I’ll read anything
penned by the great A.C.
Her quirk,
her style—the way she pulls off beige
on beige, red
shoes to boot.
Once at a reading, I spoke up and told her
her lines remind me of Iceland’s
Halldór Laxness.
“His work is sad,
so sad,” she said, by way of oblique reply. Like
putting an ice cube in my wine,
under a henna
party tent. With humidex, the temperature
was over 40 C.
Father of the groom, nice man,
was sweating like a fish. “At least it didn’t
rain today,” I bantered. “Best henna
since my son married
the sister of the bride-to-be.”
He smiled and what came next: the great procession,
ululation.
Bride-to-be borne forth in crown and caftan in a palanquin—
splashy as a bath bomb.
How not
to want to be seen
as someone or something we’re not.
Why not simply admit.
I love the word “Calvados,”
have loved it since I read it
in Arch of Triumph by Erich Remarque—repeated
like a mantra throughout the book.
Calvados. Brandy
from apples: as typical as any fruit,
but what a plum
as emblem
of having arrived—