Rachel Weber

First Date         

in the middle of the bistro
                  you took off my shoe
                  and rubbed the arch of my foot

i wore the backless dress
                  to shed my skin more easily

small globes spinning
                   no curtain to shield
                  nor shame to have

this introduction
                  plates on a marble floor
                  spoons against the glass
                  or heart
                  halfway in your lap
                  sipping at your lips
they never asked us to leave

though you fuck like you eat
                  our meals were untouched
                  as we slipped words and dreams
                  between our mouths
                  and licked the corners
                  of each others thoughts

Here

Somehow we always end up here
talking about the things we're not supposed
to talk about,
like death and sex with other people.

We end up in such odd places
you, at your ex-wife's door
euthanizing Louy, the cat,
me, on a plane to Haiti
saving children from
illiteracy.

Surely we will end up
somewhere odd together or
maybe at matched horizons,
honeying and making love
forgetting the all too tangible
thickness of our pasts
that fragments rather
than fascinates.

Rachel Weber has been teaching English for 11 years at Sachem High School East on Long Island, New York and is a graduate student in Applied Linguistics at Columbia University. contact