Cigarettes after Sex
Just Another One of Those Things
I admit I’ve never had one,
never even owned an ashtray,
never imagined rolling
away from a man or a woman
to reach for anything
but a fistful of covers,
though I did afflict myself
with a pack every few weeks
when I was younger
when life seemed very long
when I liked the excuse
to leave a hot room or a crowd
for balconies, for blue.
Now I see how one might clutch
at the chance to recall
pleasure in the echo:
the pack’s shimmy the hitch of a hip
the lighter’s rasp a racking breath
the smoke no need to talk
just evidence of our bodies
alive, mingling, becoming
part of the sheets, the walls, the door
anyone could come through.
Just Another One of Those Things
Caught myself conferring again with this tricky knee of mine,
for a quarter-century the companion advising me
snow’s on its way, or rain to flood our now-oakless yard.
Knee, I say, why can’t you warn me about the useful stuff—
norovirus, calls I shouldn’t take, a snapped streak of luck?
First time we spoke I was nine, maybe ten, climbing
the steep drive early in morning air thick and cold
as maraschino cherry syrup, not near as sweet. I remember
the charcoal trees, not menacing as they disrobed,
but disgruntled about the whole business of getting older,
sending down their shadow roots. When the bus creaked
and settled, my knee snagged as I tried to snap it straight,
though not bad enough for more than a grimace and a come on,
not bad enough to tell Gram, who still had the afternoon trek
to contend with (and us pilfering her candies, her years),
Gram, the expert in how to carry on despite all those things
that will never get any better, just better pushed aside.
She’s been gone three years today. Hey knee, I say, you need
to soften up. Barely March. The real rough weather’s yet to start.
Carolyn Oliver is the author of the poetry collection Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble (University of Utah Press, forthcoming 2022), selected by Matthew Olzmann for the Agha Shahid Ali Prize. Her writing appears in The Massachusetts Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Indiana Review, Plume, Cincinnati Review, FIELD, Indiana Review, Copper Nickel, Cherry Tree, Michigan Quarterly Review, Thrush, Booth, The South Carolina Review, Tin House Online, SmokeLong Quarterly, 32 Poems, Southern Indiana Review, America, and Tahoma Literary Review, among other journals and anthologies.
