Coffee

“Men who drink coffee come to love it beyond all things . . . among the Turks a woman can divorce her husband if he does not provide her with enough coffee.” David Liss, The Coffee Trader

“He drank his coffee unsweetened and undiluted, as did I. It was pleasantly bitter there, where they imported their own beans and roasted them on the premises, and the smell was a kind of dark perfume.” Frederick Busch, The Night Inspector

Pleasantly bitter, all right.
The doors open slowly on the premises
no matter how hard you push.
Others here read, hold tight
to pencils, radiant over pads of cheap paper.
Now at last you are in company.

The smells are redolent, good
as slippery naps when light slips through
shades of translucency, a tinge of the rosy
blossoms on the patio some might say.
Others like me notice little more than the cat
making her way onto your lap,
her need so great she’s drooling. A big laugh.

A small cappuccino to stay
and someone moves fast when I say please,
drop a bill into the tip box, cock my hip
to balance a briefcase. Wait.
The coffee is not bitter,
sweetened by milk frothed into the cup. A dilution.

He drinks his coffee unsweetened, undiluted.
Her glance is a kind of dark perfume.
His dark smell was a kind of coffee, undiluted,
Unsweetened. Once the cat drooled froth on his lap.
Pleasantly bitter. He drank a small cappuccino in order to stay.
She cocked a hip no matter how hard you pushed.
They waited, patient. In company, slippery.
The tight door was cheap need,
a shade of translucent rose pulled
half way down where light slipped
its little way through. Not welcome
though I pushed and waited, patient.

I stayed, watched his lips shine over
her cup of dark perfume. Pain like
rosy blossoms dissolving in snow.
Others like me noticed the flush
of undiluted envy shutter every eye.
My lap warmed, some thoughts of the cat.
A slippery film drenched me in light.
He drank in the clicks of the patient machine
rosy levers lifted slowly to let’s say a bad fit.

*Hilda Raz was born in Rochester, New York and educated at Boston University. She teaches in the Department of English at the University of Nebraska — Lincoln, where she is editor-in-chief of Prairie Schooner. Her poems, essays, articles, and reviews have been published in books from University Presses of New England, Scribner's, Longstreet Press, Story Line Press, North Light Books, and the Bench Press as well as The Colorado Review, Kenyon Review, Women's Review of Books, Judaism, North American Review, Literature in Medicine, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. Her last two books are both from Wesleyan UP Poetry Series, DIVINE HONORS and TRANS. Two of her essays have been accepted or are published recently in CREATIVE NONFICTION and FOURTH GENRE.