At the bar, the man’s buddy’s eyes
scavenge in arcs for women
ambulating as the man tried to explain
why he hadn’t quite gotten over
his wife’s betrayal and otherwise
moved on, ground these beans
of wisdom into flour, kneaded them into bread
and so forth, except the metaphor
of bread was like the seed thrown
to the barbarous thorns. So the man
said, Say you went to a banquet
and alone among the gorging sitting guests
your chair breaks and you fall
on your ass to the ground, where
you must ride out the banquet
for whatever reason on the damp grass
with your plate in your left hand
and spearing peas and potatoes with your right
while everyone else sits and gorges.
And maybe you should have shaken
the chair first when you took it,
as no doubt the others did theirs,
and noticed it was going to fail.
But no matter, there you are
on the grass, meal in hand,
table linen slapping your face
with each breeze. A redhead
passed behind the man, bringing
his buddy’s eyes in line with his, briefly.
The man continued, So there you are.
Now, are you angry
because you lost your chair
or because you are sitting on the ground?
The friend can’t figure the difference
as red curls and fake blonde strike up a conversation
nearby whose loudest key words
were Asshole and Real Estate. The man
plumbs the difference but no longer
caring if his interlocutor is following.
If you yearn for the chair,
you still love the woman who betrayed you.
But if what you lament is the fact
that you are on the ground,
then she is not the wound.
You have linked betrayal with life
on a conditional plane, the level that affirms
the inconsolable inextricability of the irremediable.
And with these last words he emerged loudly enough
from the sowing of his own thoughts
that his pal heard them
as he got up, mojito in hand,
to talk to red and yellow three stools away.
That’s the problem, the buddy threw in
like change on the bar,
Too many i’s in your words.