One of those days when you
realize the best thing
about the day was the barista
who made the espresso-
and-foam heart on top of your
latte and said, this
is for you, which was enough
to make you hurry out
the door before anyone could
see what it had done to you.
Otherwise, the day was full of
bigots and homophobes
and a royal flush of other –ists
and –phobes, and a man
at the grocery who said something
to the little girl
in the cart behind him in the
checkout line singing
that Katy Perry song, and whatever
it was he said,
it was enough to quiet her
roar. What is wrong
with people? you say to your
cat at the end of the day,
as you dump Grilled Liver
& Chicken in Gravy Fancy
Feast into his bowl and
scritch behind his ears
while you tell him about the
barista and the heart
and the girl in the shopping
cart, looking, I suppose,
for a little support, the lick
of a rough pink tongue to say,
I don’t know about the others
but this human is okay,
but who instead lifts one hind
leg skyward and gets
to work, so that it comes down
to the fleeting foam heart
skywritten across your coffee to
stand between you
and the thousand swastikas,
the Katy-haters, the night.
(first published in The American Journal of Poetry, 2018)
