A Brief History of the Cocktail

Yes of forsythia against the limitless ivy, a nude posed in a garden

against the silver maple pinwheeling its children into a gown around her

chime of the cliff-hanging falcon’s screeching talons against a rabbit,

wheezing soldier in a field, gunpowder tainting the cake in his pocket

jet fuel over the Pacific, waking to a hula in a zephyr,

the bride deplaning onto an island chain, bowing to leis of plumeria

the mallow of nurses’ shoes, their news, the black sedan

of a telephone spreading it like a virus and, after, the scent of a cedar closet

white gloves of a mare, in heat, pawing clover, the sail of a Spitfire

cresting a hill in San Francisco, angelic against sunset

rosin on the cello’s catgut, a honeycombed queen calling home

her lovers, a Basquiat above the head of an ascetic, chaos over order

magenta in the thorns, shy to the shears, making the blue jays bluer,

a someone on the bed’s chenille edge, composing an oratorio of medicines

the bartender in his ice pick scars, twisting zest over his creation, wheel

and butane of his Zippo kissing as the citrus, at last, expresses