fall 2018 / Poetry 2018 / volume 49

Before You Eat Your Poke Bowl—Amy Lee Kite

Sweating, laughing right there,
that’s the point, the spot, the purpose
of this encounter I was so eager
to have, to hold, to inhale—
quickly on the bathroom floor,
from my knees, I gaze up at you
standing in the dimly lit room,
I joke that you are kinglike
as your skin reflects the light
from that flickering bulb
which blinks as rapidly
as this fleeting moment
unless I’m able to truly absorb it
if I focus intently
savoring every last drop,
every tick of the clock,
every bite of the new flavorful bowl
at the local dive down the street
it is not fancy, maybe not even clean
but their poke is so good, so fresh
we’ll end up there inevitably
after my work here is done
after that building feeling spills
out of me, out of you
I think I just told you I loved you
Did I say that out loud?
You gaze down at me, blackness
the pupils of your eyes—
they say so much
I envision the thought, the sentiment
about to erupt from your lips
before we quickly devour our lunch,
you catch your plane back east
leaving me with only
your forthcoming words to decipher
what will they be?
I wonder as I watch your lips move
but hardly emit a sound,
This was fun, girl—
and with that you smile,
walking out of my bathroom,
reminding me you’re craving
that poke bowl, a combo
of tuna and salmon this time.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s