Down the steel pipe
water, small marks of corrosion;
when the stream touches
concrete, upwelling,
drops in that cupped shape
reminds me of learning the word
"surface tension" in ninth grade
where every moment was filled
with the anxiety of finding
a place, probably not like rain.
During a drought we're careful
or at least guilty, the water
that washes off the day, rationed:
on, soap, off, brief repeat.
The way a spill covers the table
then flows onto the floor
as though it were so much larger
than a single cup.
The Answer, in plush work-out coveralls,
holds an overflowing cup in shaky hands,
while rocking rhythm to match the question.
Solution or solvent, I want to ask,
as she reaches out, "Drink." Cautious, I watch
the bubbles foaming over the top. "What?"
This request ignored, I try out the piano,
play Dvorak "From the New World," and she
sings harmony. She sounds like my mother,
approximate pitch appropriate only
to car or shower. The Answer responds
to my discomfort, "I'll stop." Instead, she
drinks from the cup herself. The foam puzzles
her. "Drink up." "No thanks, it is nearly morning."
Ruthless hexagons tessellate across the space
of a tiled wall; a long street at night, lighted intervals
provide unwanted perspective on distance; running
out of time before running out of numbers;
the way a grandmother says, "That's enough now dear,"
before you've even passed three hundred and seven.
Moment of proof, as in knowing that you are in love,
whether or not the other reciprocates. Moment of proof,
when showing the second case follows naturally/logically
from the first, and therefore the third will follow.
This is the fear of pattern, that one betrayal implies
a second, and all subsequent failures of connection.
Carol Dorf's poems have appeared in In Posse Review, Moira, A Cappella Zoo, Naugatuck River Review, Feminist Studies, Fringe, The Midway, Poemeleon, Runes, and 13th Moon. They have been anthologized in Not a Muse, Boomer Girls, and elsewhere. She's taught in a variety of venues including Berkeley City College, a science museum, as a California Poet in the Schools, and at Berkeley High School. She is the poetry editor of Talking Writing, and her reviews appear in New Pages.