—For Luis Kong & Carol Merideth
threw me a surprise party.
During the toast, I upstaged myself
& raised up my wineglass too fast,
sloshing a river of Hungarian Bull's Blood
on my friends' pristine white wool carpet.
That was right after I'd disgraced myself
by flipping my dinnerplate heaped with beets
red cabbage, & spaghetti down their white walls.
Everybody was screeching: use club soda.
No, use salt. Vinegar. More wine! Nothing worked.
It was really wine-stained. An ugly purple bruise
that became a red cape waving before the bull.
My friends got divorced before I turned 41.
I, who had danced at their wedding.
Talk about bottleshock! Over a white carpet.
It took them years to reconcile, & to remarry.
Something had to go & it wasn't the wine.
During their wedding, they clinched a deal:
& toasted their reunion with a fine red wine.
No more white wool carpets in their house!
Or me either, apparently. We should've just
thrown the rest of the wine on the carpet.
It would've saved them a lot of grief in the end.
7/20/13 & 8/17/14
No comments:
Post a Comment