Short-Order Cook to a King

you lowered your mouth to mine, first,
head lowered like a bow, lips straight mine pursed
like a little girl playing bergman
(no, kelly) and i thought that might happen that night and
so i tucked bits of ginger into my teeth
i bought from the stand on Tudor street
because you luxuriate in having that bite in your soup.

i thought that might happen every night until that night
so i tasted like ginger for a while, watching your height
get smaller and farther as you rode away, in late cold dark
and resolved to get some other flavor and make my mark
on the loops and furrows of your boy brain.

but ginger worked until it didnt anymore
and you came around until you didnt for
a while and then it was time for fiery peppermint
fresh sticks of it i stuck in my pockets until it stuck in the lint
of my pink coat. you tried tongue for dinner once, mine,
and winced at its fire, liked it just fine
said it reminded you of cigars and royal crown whispers.

until one raucous evening when i swapped spit
with a towhead yelling skinny thing who couldnt sit
still. That was when we hadnt spoken for a few weeks
and you mentioned books and business and my cheeks
were salty all the time. but i took a brave break from
my sea and went out on the town to the artist's slum
warehouse. he, that blonde, tasted like nicaragua and oranges.

citrus tasted like relief to me and, figuring
you had been missing because you were configuring
messes of minds like ours, i thought you could use some orange, too
a woman's attempt at getting your mood to sienna from gray blue
and then you'd know know know i can bring quiet.

so i bit a golden sun in two and found you two at the bar
a deflated you and your southern whiskey, neat, at the far
end of the room. your murmurs were of disconnect distance
but so intimate i forgot how your absence meant resistance
and showered your sandpaper neck with sugary titian hellos
where were you downcast prince, your humor so marked by the gallows?
you said you liked citrus, then ordered yourself some fried plantains.

fruits go moldy until you rang my bell and pounded on my door. I am unprepared
and you are regal with quiet demands and can hardly muster some care.
now you have shown up here on my door early morning, fog gray
cinereal dove early, and ask so sharply why i taste, taste, taste! that way
your velvet baritone boxes my ears with its lush disgust.

Without pause to pepper my bitterness- in truth?
This taste is the taste of wanting you.
my tongue sweats sadness feral with reeking lust
my gums don a coat of grime tailored from your dust
and my breath? a stale hops catacomb of decay
its longing that keeps me from brushing gossamer cobwebs away.
but you are here now, my love! there's some rosemary i've been saving to chew just for these very moments i get to spend with you.