if I’m someone she should know,
pay attention to, bother having coffee with,
talk with about the father who raped her at twelve,
about my father, about the slant of rainy light after
you’re weeping for half a life and then some and
when/if you leave the toilet paper unwinding from the top
or bottom, and what our papas said the two days after,
and avocados and kumquats, and the strange
geometric shapes that cascade into our dreams
five days each year before the equinox, and if
I’m well known enough for her to pry open my palm
and slice my lifelines with an X-Acto knife—would I
do that for her?—and have I won a Pulitzer yet, and
what color were the eyes of God when I looked straight
at Him for three minutes without blinking once, Ok
maybe once, and may she have that last bottle of wine,
could she borrow a glass, and how much does The New Yorker
pay, do I think they would consider her work, she’s started
writing, too, have I slept with anyone there, and does the mold
in my studio make my eyes itch in the morning—or evening,
she’s heard both—because she really wants to know about the time
the London editor who knew the New York editor who knew me
from someone at the colony or raved about my work on Eskimos or
transplants or something like that and later sat on a committee
that judged that really important prize—she can’t remember
which one right now because, thanks again, she had a bit too much
of my Merlot, but am I that writer, the one she’s heard
something about, the one she should know?
No, I say, no, though I am someone
writing, trying to write, someone.
