Moira Egan, American poet.
48TH BIRTHDAY SONNET
Moira Egan
I don’t want cake. I’ve lost all urge for sweets,
including fruit, to my dear one’s despair.
He knows I’ll eat it if it’s wrapped in meat
(figs and prosciutto), or soaked in Sauternes.
These days I’ll take the bitter, and the salt,
though bitterness, they say, is a disorder
—look in the DSM-V, doctor’s orders—
To shut mine up, I take it for a walk.
I share this day with certain gentlemen
who took the early exit: Hemingway,
John Gardner (speeding round that bend), Hart Crane.
Compared to theirs, my death wish holds no candle.
I’ll blow it out. Sometimes wishes come true.
My father died when he was fifty-two.
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BAR NAPKIN SONNET #11
Moira Egan
Things happen when you drink too much mescal.
One night, with not enough food in my belly,
he kept on buying. I’m a girl who’ll fall
damn near in love with gratitude and, well, he
was hot and generous and so the least
that I could do was let him kiss me, hard
and soft and any way you want it, beast
and beauty, lime and salt — sweet Bacchus’ pards —
and when his friend showed up I felt so warm
and generous I let him kiss me too.
His buddy asked me if it was the worm
inside that makes me do the things I do.
I wasn’t sure which worm he meant, the one
I ate? The one that eats at me alone?