Eve's Happy Hour
by
Katherine Hoerth
Katherine Hoerth
Katherine Hoerth is the author of a poetry collection, The Garden Uprooted (Slough Press, 2012). Her work has been included in journals such as Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, BorderSenses, and Front Porch. She teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Texas Pan American and serves as Assistant Poetry Editor of Fifth Wednesday Journal.
So this is Eden, almost paradise—
a smoke filled bar, a frozen daiquiri,
and me, sleek hummer in an iridescent
dress, who's come to drink it in, to sip
from every flower with a swizzle straw
and watch before her as the well-known tale
unfolds within the shadows of this place.
Most fruits hang low—the man a few stools down
with too much aftershave, the desperate scent
of peaches past their prime, and one who sits
across a table from his wife, his fingers
covering the apple of his throat.
He strokes it like a secret as his eyes,
like mine, gaze upward, past this paradise
as if he knows there's more to life than milk
and honeyed chardonnays. The ones with lips
already stained in mauve taste sweetest now.
I pierce my maraschino with my straw,
remembering my first bite into fruit.
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