Last Meal
Risotto requires the garlic fried golden brown
in a dollop of butter and then some grains
of sea salt mixed in before you add
the cup of white wine that steams up with
a sudden whiff of those hills between Chablis
and Châtillon-sur-Seine. Everyone knows this
of course, so here I am stating the obvious
to warm up the chopping block. What’s not
so obvious is the fact that my girlfriend won’t
be joining me for the wine (in a glass)
and the dinner (on a plate) on this rainy
evening in June. Things are where
they should be, people too, because you
can’t say it often enough: you are bloody
accountable for your actions and those sharp
words you wield, none of which can ever
be taken back, just like the barrel-flavoured
sips and the tangy mouthfuls that go into you,
not to mention the trip you never shared through
the French countryside or the saffron you
forgot to buy on the way home. Of course they
can’t. How can you take back something that
doesn’t exist, unless for some reason they –
the saffron and that trip to France – sidled
into the poem like one of those portentous
sunsets from any of the June evenings in 1789.
Waltz
Taking stock is not always easy
if you’re a man of action,
but that’s what we’re asked to do
stuck at home in isolation.
The list is far too long to ponder
of all the things gone wrong,
the parts of you scattered,
freely given, and left behind.
You’ve been on the run far too
long. It’s more straightforward
to work out on the floor,
or go to the kitchen and froth
up an espresso, just one more
you promise yourself, before
coaxing a more stable self to
chill and nibble at those seeds
on the mind’s window sill,
trying not to pay excess heed
to who will pay the bills,
or how to immunize the past –
in the end reaching for the music:
a consolation to sift through
the measures and bars of your
kind of jazz: a trio, of course, with
bass and drums and that smiling
Steinway mouth, all wistfully
stirring their parts to play
a tune of vanished love,
what once was: a home with
wife and child, and open mirth,
the hymn that kept it all alive.
Francis Fernandes grew up in the US and Canada. He studied in Montréal and has a degree in Mathematics. Somewhere along the way, he discovered that poetry counts, too. Currently, he lives in Germany, where he writes and teaches.