Three Poems

Prosciutto

Phosphorescent in the pan, incongruous – like us
at our first meeting. All that thin, petty crackling –
colliding by chance in a nightclub – never wholesome,
never clean. On the sticky basement floor, rising steam,
a crush of sweat and belonging. In those days, food
was a boring distraction, at most a box to be ticked.
Before insatiety. We never cooked; I never got to see
the city through a soft-focus Ottolenghi lens, you picked
me no fiora di zucca. No, only microwaved lasagne
from your mother’s freezer. Offered burned pancetta;
scant scraps of a richer dish that might sustain me. Soft
crumbs from a sacripantina was the most I could hope for,
to pick them off your sweater one by one, to know such
sweetness was transitory, and that I was not your choice.


Breaking Up in Fort Lauderdale
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