The fish taco was familiar
though it was my first.
A tall young girl called the snack stand
by name, with a lilt in her voice. I wanted
to be familiar too, like the taco
and the taco stand.
The flight was delayed. I wiped my lips
and wadded napkins
on the tray until the pile was fluffy
and my lips dry. I held
my helpful insomnia. Before
I dropped off to sleep: was she
two hundred or five hundred
miles away still, and was she feeling
as foreign as I was, and would she
be amused into comfort? My solitary
familiar fish taco, freed from food court,
neither here nor here.
I found solace in my tray
and the debris thereon,
something created, then
untended, que sera, sera.
I was hungry for poetry, for things
just as they are, for cabbage and repose.
Everything poems, open-life readings,
nits and crits, coffee, desire, tortillas,
crisp cabbage and weary repose.
When at last I slipped to sleep at the table
someone tried to sneak the open book
of poems right from my hands.
It was opened to pages 28 and 29,
where a man meets a woman.