Green Heart
[I wrote this poem sometime last year and read it publicly for the first time during my Write On! feature at the Lee Road Phoenix in Cleveland Heights. Recently, a magazine I'd offered it to decided not to use it after all. So I'll share it here instead.]
Green Heart
Absinthe is not an electronic keyboard you play with your midsection muscles but a green liquor sleeping with wormwood stashed behind the Zohar in my basement bookcase. In this case, brand name Absente, it's 136 proof and came with its own golden slotted spoon you can rest on your glass, liquor on the bottom, sugar cube on the top. Pour water slowly over the sugar til it dissolves, turning the liquid white and cloudy, then pour the concoction slowly down your throat until your fear and occasional paranoia dissolve into white cloudy apparent clarity.
Last night I couldn't be with you, so I opened the bottle, surprised how much it smelled like licorice, tasted like ouzo but smoother, probably because wormwood numbs the tongue like cocaine, and got high on the thought of you and the thought of the feel of you and the feel of the green then white and cloudy liquid that took me to you or away from feeling you absent and reminded me what I love and don't always love but sometimes miss about loving you. As I poured a second glass of green and dissolved a second sugar cube over it into further white cloudy apparent clarity, a thought occurred to me, sending me to find my journal and write it down. Absinthe makes the heart fonder.
Categories: Poetry by JC
Tags: Jesus Crisis John Burroughs Absinthe 2010
it's stunning work. breathtaking. they are stupid. that is all.
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Thank you, Channie! From green heart to red face...
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So is this a companion piece to Dianne's poem of the same name?
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Dianne's was written years before I ever knew her. Lots of poets have "green heart" poems - even Pablo Neruda: http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/pablo_neruda/poems/15731
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well aware hers was written long ago.... but you two often write and read work off of one another so I was just wondering.
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oh so much green digs on this. share that bottle of prose brother
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Much appreciated, bro! All the best bottles are best shared.
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hope of course you've re-submitted it somewhere else. just because one place didn't use it does not mean someone else won't.
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I submitted it to Crisis Chronicles.
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Made me smile. Convoluted intellectual pun, several of them. I always wanted to try absinthe, but now that I'm almost at the end of my 20th year of not drinking, it ain't in the cards.
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Glad it made you smile. Like you, I always wanted to try it. When I finally did, I was disappointed. It gave me an initial euphoria like I'd get from drinking any 136 proof liquor - but I was expecting much more, even hallucinations, and nothing more happened. Maybe I didn't drink enough at one time - but I did drink a considerable amount, even taking into consideration my high alcohol tolerance.
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