CarrollBlog 3.7

Late Poem

by Cynthia Zarin

" . . . a matter of changing a slide in a magic lantern."

I wish we were Indians and ate foie gras

and drove a gas-guzzler

and never wore seat belts

I'd have a baby, yours, cette fois,

and I'd smoke Parliaments

and we'd drink our way through the winter

in spring the baby would laugh at the moon

who is her father and her mother who is his pool

and we'd walk backwards and forwards

in lizard-skin cowboy boots

and read Gilgamesh and Tintin aloud

I'd wear only leather or feathers

plucked from endangered birds and silk

from exploited silkworms

we'd read The Economist

it would be before and after the internet

I'd send you letters by carrier pigeons

who would only fly from one window

to another in our drafty, gigantic house

with twenty-three uninsulated windows

and the dog would be always be

off his leash and always

find his way home as we will one day

and we'd feed small children

peanut butter and coffee in their milk

and I'd keep my hand glued under your belt

even while driving and cooking

and no one would have our number

except I would have yours where I've kept it

carved on the sole of my stiletto

which I would always wear when we walked

in the frozen and dusty wood

and we would keep warm by bickering

and falling into bed perpetually and

entirely unsafely as all the best things are

—your skin and my breath on it.