The Fork to Take
I had pegged you as
protégé, adoptee,
someone I could save.
The last thing
I needed
was
another lover.
You call yourself
‘an accident
looking
for a place
to happen.’
I call you
my sweet, my love,
not only
because you carry knives
for me
& want to beat up
all my
ex—husbands—
but because
you can laugh
at yourself
for wanting to.
We dream
of the baby
we will never have.
The little Jewish WASP
with golden blue eyes,
poems on the tip of his tongue.
your height, my hair,
& jokes that hit
their targets
on a slant.
He will never be
in the Social Register.
But will he know
which fork to take–
as you did
when you drove
off my road,
slyly taking the wrong fork
in order to stay
the night?
O you are sly,
my sweet wheat
looking for
a harvest.
Shall I reap you?
Shall I do to you
what the hurricane
does with the waving
grain?
Shall I thresh & bind you,
run barefoot
through your body
trying to stamp out
death?
Or shall I merely
let you
lift me up
like the wind spinning
an errant seed,
& let it
take me
where it will,
right fork,
wrong fork,
no fork
at all,
since we will take
the same path
through
the air
after all?
