23 Thursday Oct 2014
Tags
Your sexy frugality
disciplined
my greedy tastes.
Now, I delight
in brewing
a single cup
of coffee
at home.
The world
is contained
within
my ceramic mug.
Whether the roast
is robust or
without fervor,
it remains the
most delicious cup.
Its simplicity.
Your simplicity.
Our simplicity.
More sensual than steam.
08 Monday Sep 2014
Posted in Poetry
20 Friday Jun 2014
Tags
The first person who arrives at work
goes into the Farmhouse to make coffee.
It’s nine o’clock on a Friday morning
and none of the writers have come down
from their cottages yet: I like to think
of them snug in their sleeping lofts,
dreaming up ideas for their next novel
or poem or play or essay.
First, I fill the grinder with the
regular beans, three scoops full.
Next, I add three scoops of the decaf beans.
(They are darker in color and less oily,
I remember this from my training as a barista.)
The grinder whirs as I fill the carafe
with water and wait. Vito makes the coffee
best, I muse. He must have superhuman
coffee-making powers associated with being
Italian, as he does with parking and
bending the laws of space and time
when driving in his Prius.
As the coffee brews, I look through the
window over the kitchen sink and see
the crow who has once again returned
to wash what he has scavenged in the bird bath.
A writer arrives and cuts up an apple:
“I like to cross the road first thing
each morning and feed the llamas.”
“I swear they recognize the word ‘apples,’
if you call it out,” I offer.
We agree that the male llama seems to be
the ringleader–he’s more aggressive than
the other two, only allowing them to partake
after he has gently smacked down apple chunks.
Five shallow saucers filled with water
upon which flowers float adorn the
Farmhouse Table.
The light hits the table
at just the right angle and it is a light
for all writers, full of hope and possibility.
As I dump the coffee grounds into the compost,
I reflect on how nice it is that at Hedgebrook,
no one minds if you take a minute
to stop
& write a poem.
20 Saturday Apr 2013
Posted in Poetry
Everyone in Seattle is a writer.
The passive aggressive nature of the weather
in the Pacific Northwest lends itself well
as a backdrop to this particular profession.
The sporadic rays of warm sun give slivers of hope–
overcast is normal (and preferred), as it inspires
depression and dancing with alcoholism
(we’re all trying to be Hemmingway, anyway.)
Every coffeeshop an office that can be rented
for pennies on the hour. Each piece of latte art
a dictation taken and formed by the barista who really should be
somewhere else, really should be writing
in a studio in Capitol Hill, shared with
her cat named Lolita or Hester.
Instead, she is steaming milk for other writers:
grinding, dousing, furiously tamping the
finely ground espresso into the portafilter,
letting out her frustration for the poems
that remain unwritten, but not too much,
because espresso is temperamental–
hot waters shoots through and rich,
syrupy shots flow forth like nectar–
the feathered latte art a poem in and of itself
a wordless poem
that stands alone
ephemeral, but for
the hipster who
captures it with Instagram
slaps on a filter, posts,
and goes back to their
writing
in
S
e
a
t
t
l
e.
