“She Says, Meet Me at Pomegranate Restaurant, 6PM” by Amanda Merpaw
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets' daily poetry dispatch. Read "She Says, Meet Me at Pomegranate Restaurant, 6PM" by Amanda Merpaw.
She Says, Meet Me at Pomegranate Restaurant, 6PM
By Amanda Merpaw
And I’ll admit, nearly nothing charms me
like the strut of a dinner reservation. I tell her
fruit is an obvious metaphor and she’s all
Maybe the obvious is ours to spoil. Aren’t intentions
a practice of kindness? We sit by the door,
knees coy and close, her hand pearled
with condensation from cold pinot.
She asks me my rising sign and
the saffron rice arrives swimming
in stewed split peas, the flatbread starred
with sesame. Here I am, a mouthful
of Scorpio, and now she knows. After rose-
petalled ice cream, she suggests that
corner cider bar on Harbord. I want her
to lead me blindfolded, desperate for descriptions
of the unfurling street in her mouth. Barely
in our seats, she kisses me and I already know
what to do with my hands. Touch makes me
material, mirrors me until I kiss her and think
of kissing her and think of being seen kissing
her. I allow myself to be perceived longer than
I expect. Did it take me a long time or no time
to get here? Regardless: it’s now and real, my queer
ideal of pleasure, and no one, not even the rain,
has such soft lips. What I mean is, it was a good kiss.
Walking back to her place life-high and tongue-
giddy, she admits too soon that she wants
a family. I won’t invoke the future, what I don’t
want from it—not like this. Desire quiets
as much as it heightens. Later, in the salt
light of her room, sheet-sprawled and bra-
less, she says I like you. Do you think this
could work? Unsure what she’s midnight fishing
for, I say Who knows? Anything is possible.
Copyright © Amanda Merpaw
From Most of All the Wanting (Palimpsest Press, May 2024).
Amanda Merpaw (she/her) is a writer, editor, and educator. She is the author of the collection Most of All the Wanting (Palimpsest Press, 2024) and the chapbook Put the Ghosts Down Between Us (Anstruther Press, 2021). Her poetry, playwriting, and nonfiction have appeared in various journals, including CV2, Grain, The Literary Review of Canada, Prairie Fire, and with Playwrights Canada Press, and she has been a finalist for Arc Poetry Magazine’s Poem of the Year contest. She is currently a contributing editor at Arc Poetry Magazine and a member of the editorial board at Anstruther Press. She is an Ottawa-born Franco-Ontarian, currently based in Toronto.
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