BY GREG HEWETT

History Intrudes on Morning Tea

As if it were as simple as the sun rising,

the two of us—two men living

together and legally

married—sip ordinary

Ceylon tea from china

cups without ceremony, ignoring the fact

history’s brought us to this moment we desire

to keep as simple as the myth

of leaves blowing down from heaven

into a monk’s boiling water.

History intrudes, regardless: tired of the Chinese

monopoly, the British smuggled

tea-plants into India, made

slave-labor plantations, and

with gunboats forced the Emperor

to import Indian opium to balance

trade, while today

men like us are sent to concentration camps in Chechnya,

wail in cages in Egyptian courtrooms,

and in our lifetime, in our country, were castrated with chemicals.

Night Stories, 12:01 a.m.

This is the hour we begin to resemble ourselves,

when, in sharp starlight, identity disassembles,

when this middle-class, middle-aged, mostly-white, mostly-gay, mostly-male self

walking through the park in as much dark as a city allows—

fruit-bats circling overhead, humidity thick on the skin—disappears,

if lucky, into an ensemble of selves reassembling

stories broken, forgotten, more significant than we know.

Bone-bead, unfolded condom, cobalt bottle,

abalone hat-pin, cracked syringe.

These things I’ve found each hold

a story folded into silence.

Not lost—untold—though not mine to tell.

Greg Hewett is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently, "Blindsight" (Coffee House Press) and a forthcoming novel, "No Names." He teaches at Carleton College and lives in Minneapolis.