25 April 2008.
[This is for fellow first-year MFA Kate Kimball, who I promised during a seminar that I would write a poem with iced coffee in it. There is iced coffee in this poem, but then the poem decided to get the hell away from me and do its own thing.]
After Drinking a Large Iced Coffee, I Decide it’s High Time to Chase You Down
The light brown liquid goodness might as well
have come in a bucket, a big bucket, with a warning
label marked CAUTION: This beverage may be emotionally
damaging. The lecture hall buzzes under my skin.
Conversations flit around my unstilled, shivering
hands. You are an addict, someone whispers.
I see your story in a far corner and follow the words
like crumbs across buildings and concrete, back
to the library yet again. Somewhere in the dusty classifications
and the white noise jumping into my brain—somewhere you
are here. I pull you out of a forgotten database, read your mindmaps
as deconstruction, wipe away the years with my fingers. Your faded
eyes duck behind your hands as I trace your line.