By: Christopher Brooks

Tequila

I like a glass tequila
when I sit to write
a poem
at night.

The quiet in my room
is a delight,
quite
still.

The glass is thin
its rim is fine
the taste is sharp—

piquant.

###

Physics

I tripped.

And suddenly I was hurtling towards the concrete
accelerating at 9.8 meters per second squared.

At that moment (as it does at every moment
according to one interpretation of quantum mechanics),
the universe split.

In one universe, I broke both wrists.
In another, I hit my head and died.
In yet another, I hadn’t tripped.

In this universe, I tucked and rolled,
escaping with no more than a few scrapes and bruises
and a bemused sense of having gotten away with something.

Where did I learn to fall so skillfully?

###

Illicit Kiss

Kissing in a parking lot,
somewhere we’re unlikely to be seen,
after dark.
We meet again,
aware that fruit so sweet must be forbidden,

As they go about their mundane chores,
hauling groceries and returning shopping carts,
under harsh electric lights,
do they notice what we’re doing,
smushed against your car, smooching,
in a corner of the lot,
like teens whose ardour can’t resist each other’s lips:
hard and soft and warm.

it’s delightful; it is utter bliss.
This
is what I miss.

I feel you and you feel me,
I taste you and you taste me,
I smell you and you smell me,
I breathe you in and you breathe me,
in and out.

In delirium I nearly swoon,
we float away through the mists above
to the moon in a red balloon,
inflated with the helium of love.