Looking for spare change, I find
a spoon in my lover’s pants pocket
and it smells like liquor. I shake
his khakis and out falls more noise
than a quarter and dime should make.
What hits the floor can shake a place,
like upstairs neighbors fighting
last night. Pots and pans, and I imagine,
elbows and knees slammed above me.
Gravity does not hold a ceiling to a wall,
one lover to another. Did our builder
count out his nails? Loose hinges
cause doors to dangle, and the cat
sneaks out. Random pieces of grass
get stuck in a wandering shoe.
Maybe our neighbors threw the spoon
out the window and my lover found
it on his way home. I run my tongue
along its cool, arched back, taste
not quite Bourbon, not white
wine. I slide both hands in his pockets
to see what else I might find.
Beth Oast Williams is a student with the Muse Writers Center in Norfolk, Virginia. Her poetry has appeared in West Texas Literary Review, Wisconsin Review, Glass Mountain, The Bookends Review, and Willard and Maple, among others. She was nominated for the 2019 Pushcart Prize in poetry, received second place in the 2019 Poetry Matters Project and was a semi-finalist for Poet’s Billow’s 2018 Atlantis Award. Her workshop experience includes Bread Loaf and VQR Writers Conferences.
