BY D. Iasevoli

The coffee tastes terrible, as if the urns

were used in mining sulfur: burnt

out again, raw throats, red eyes, hundreds

of miles more to drive. I have a wife now.

I still wish for a dog, a big ugly mutt

waiting where the road curves, Manhattan and I-90.

So, she says, Shall we roam around for a year?

My wife sips the hot coffee the hue of thin mud

at the lip of a creek. I glance away from her eye

as I watch some geezer, tough in flannel, dungarees,

cut up to the counter to order a beer without words.

He sucks up the suds, stares out into the road.

My wife’s sharp mind clamps in her throat

as I picture her cool kisses and the bite of her tongue.

Manhattan becomes the ghost of a town,

fallen rocks and rotting timbers, the keys

to the car left on the table, the sun’s red euphoria

on the grimed diner glass telling our story.

D. Iasevoli taught for 40 years. He received his doctorate from Columbia University, and, in 2000, he was New York City’s “Poetry Teacher of the Year.” His chapbook, The Less Said, was featured at the Bowery Poetry Café. He now lives in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, where he serves as a volunteer firefighter and makes bows.

Process Note: I meditate each morning and then write, often about the specifics of place. Much later (a year, typically), I return to the possible poem and rewrite it. What remains from the original draft stands out, to me, as a shard of a small truth. This poem contains a few shards.