Poetry. Bar Napkin Poem for a Cuban Pool Shark, by Beza Alford. Image: a man climbs up a fire escape on the outside of an apartment building, through the window of which we can see a young woman gesturing.

Bar Napkin Poem for a Cuban Pool Shark

I keep the cork from our French Bordeaux

movie night on the kitchen counter by my sweet

cigarettes and your lost lighter, our shrine

to Marlboro, as if you might drunkenly climb

past brick beehives and up my fire escape,

careful not to let the orange rust stain

your blue-black slacks that always smell

like spilled gin and lime juice and my rose oil

perfume, as if you’ll come to my window

like a drought-thirsty, flutter-hungry

hummingbird, knowing I’ll always feed you,

say you have eyelashes like a movie star.

Don’t you believe me when I say

I want you to crush and grind

my bones into short fat lines,

lift me from the squeaky teal

coffee table by the little plant collection

you didn’t think I could keep alive? You don’t

think I could keep us alive, but my no

is a bright red ribbon. Cut me with the

biggest scissors you carry—I won’t bleed,

I’ll beg you to come banging on my door

at 2:08 am with a shaky handwritten bar napkin

poem and a spare pool token peace offering

and I’ll hold you and you’ll tell me you miss me

and I will say likewise and we will kiss like two bricks

with the mortar of our teeth meant to hold us there forever.

Beza Alford

Beza Alford is an Ethiopian-American poet raised in Inverness, Florida. She kindles a passion for misused semicolons, unnecessary hyphens, and decadent imagery. She graduated with a degree in creative writing from Florida State University, and longs quietly for lovely Tallahassee from Kansas City, MO. She experiences frequent road rage, leaves dishes in the sink overnight, and is, nonetheless, wonderful. The two books on her nightstand are Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays and Toni Morrison’s Sula.

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