H.K. Hummel
Bombay Sapphire
I sneak this bottle home in a paper sack, shy about my taste for blue exotica in this town of blue collars. You sprawl on the lawn after a hard run; the whole town slides past, one by one along the narrow corridor. Etched herbs cascade down the sides of the bottle: juniper berries, cubeb berries, liquorice, lemon peel, grains of paradise. A woman in a muscle truck hollers gruffly, "Dude you all right?" You reply, "Yep, just stretching." I shut the door and look for a jigger. We are meant to imagine the liquor's essence full of pirate booty, carried across open seas on sloops skimming along with full sails from Java, West Africa, Morocco. "We need a bigger yard," I complain as you saunter in. This place: it's too small for us. I wander room to room in half a business suit and bra: some mother of a student walks their dog across our lawn. We need a bit of land that is more forgiving than this slim sliver of green nothing hazarding the difference from our neighbor's windows framing a gay parade of blue glass ducks to ours that frames my naked breasts all too often for a non-practicing nudist. I want the spirit vapor to be mine, passing through grains of paradise and rising on the other side imbued with heady, other-worldly Java, a land of fire-starters: priests sitting cross-legged summoning enough sparking electricity in the space between their palms to set a small twig pile burning. Me, I rub my hands together and the dishes come clean.
Coda
Snow slides and swirls in the vortex of wind against the face of the mountain’s cornice. A man has a handful of sweet oats and whiskey jacks; this is the man you will let go of today. Say it to yourself: the man on cross-country skis, in wool and corduroy, the man on a mountaintop with a handful of unafraid birds is not yours to have. He belongs to the pines and sky; he belongs to the boldest of curious birds; he belongs to the bare geology of time. You will be letting him go your entire life.
H.K. Hummel’s poetry has recently been published in Calyx, Quay, and Babel Fruit. She is the recipient of Western Australia’s 2009 Katherine Susannah Prichard Emerging Writer in Residence award. She is co-editor of Blood Orange Review www.bloodorangereview.com and lives in Berkeley, California.
