A Sandwich Of Feta, Tomato

by Martin Bemberg

Last night from the film depicting the infamous Ilich,
One Carlos Ramirez-Martinez, I learned to smoke while writing,
Paper to pen.
I watched as Angie, my favorite, ein Deutscher mit Gewiss,
With one hand held a cigarette betwixt two fingers,
The middle, the fore, and held down left-page,
Twisting cigarette, which faces not out but faces palm instead
As he wrote with his right, smoke slipping probably through fingers
Until it reached his eyes and told him, I would think,
"It is time to put me to your lips, it's time to stoke me,
Smoke on me again."

And I think of course of ceding smoke and of course drink too
In your presence and how of course
It has been one year, one year since playing games that
Being new to you seemed too to strike me somehow novel.
One year ago today - one year or so ago today -
Our trading tongues in ways that number more than one
And less than three,
You taught me and not to mention brought me yours,
And after I gave lesson on how my South pronounces oil,
I thought this tryst of ours might just be dear upon your shores,
But you are, it turns out, from love-dearth stock and disappointed soil.

Today's raw tomato (it made me sick and sore, debased unto the gut)
Perhaps was rotten, but then of course there is the chance
(There's always the chance)
That it was the thought of you only once forgotten,
The thought of your "make like an adult and wake diurnal,"
Your "Before I for the day go",
Your each-day sandwich of feta, tomato,
That tinged this sickness-sad nostalgia.

Perhaps it was the without-fail or the with-for-certain calling in your chest,
Was the daily-left something I would never otherwise have put to mouth,
But which for that I came to love so much the more and nonetheless.