Two Poems

Jess Novak

Potage Au Chocolat

What I remember most is what she did to the couple
Who had the nerve to be troubled by her liberal use of the word

Cocksucker. I don’t know who the fuck that lady
Thinks she is, Grandma sneered, tapping at an unlit

Cigarette, snapping her gilt-and-cherubim enameled case
Closed. Surrounded by ceramic roses, red candles, a cluster

Of cubist paintings, we always smoked in the boudoir,
Behind which the mirrored bar was stocked with Jack and sherry,

Three types of vermouth, a pair of sterling grape shears.
So I’m sending them a bunch of subscriptions to just the filthiest

Porno rags. Oh, they defy description, darling. Just awful.
You know the kind I mean to get, pussycat, don’t you?

I did, & watched my famously, perpetually dissatisfied
Grandmother regally stroke a leopard hide chaise

And grin in the slow manner of a large cat with a big kill:
She who lived only in largesse, who drove grandpa crazy

By moving apartments constantly, citing the lack
Of space in Manhattan or the lack of Manhattan

In Brooklyn, who had never in her life praised a meal, or a fur,
A necklace or a girl other than myself. I was The Baby

But I was also on thin ice: that night, I’d fucked up
The crabcakes & failed to marry the lawyer she’d had her heart on.

The crab, full of breadcrumbs, had hardened into little
Pucks that were not pillowy, she’d said. Not like

The lump crab in New York. The full lump, you know the kind—
Clouds. You tried, dear, but in the city they were pillows,

Pussycat, big, fluffy, barely held together with anything.
I was scared of what she’d say when I brought out dessert:

The mousse hadn’t set (I’d bought half & half instead of cream)
& I was unlikely to marry a doctor before she’d finished her

Cigarette. In the fridge, there were thick Lindt puddles waiting
In brandy glasses, & I knew I had to go big as I was already

Home. I announced, dramatically, that I’d concocted something
New for her and her alone. A play on a French classic, I said,

Nouveau: Potage de Chocolat. I doilied a tray and brought out
The pathetic chocolate soup. Then watched, amazed, as she ate every

Bite, eyes down, radiant, her reddest lipstick smearing
Each inch of glass and silver, her face suddenly cherubic:

It’s fucking gorgeous, pussycat, darling. Truly unique. Now then,
hand me that stack over there, Lambchop, So I can get these orders

In for our friends downstairs. Grandma uncapped her pen &
Licked her forefinger, then spider-scrawled Bill Me

Later on every card in her neatly tapped stack of Flesh Fantasy,
Hustler and Cruella. Then for good measure, she ensured two

Years each of Big Black Butts, Bizarre, Stallion, and
Plumpers, a big-girls publication that seemed to give her

Extra satisfaction, as she signed the neighbors’ names &
Shuffled her ninety years’ experience back 
        To her bar for a kiss & a nightcap.


***



Talking with Jenny Lewis, My Favorite Rockstar (Whom I Have Yet to Meet),
On January 1, 2011, The Day Not One, But Two of My Old Flames Got Married

Of course I’m convinced it’s something insidious—
that perfect cat scratch of a date, how could it not be. I’m convinced,
of course, that the two of them are part of some cabal
intent on making me feel old & slutty like a public
tennis court net, not young and slutty, like the tightest bluest
skirt they both loved on me, the one that flipped up like a pop-top lid.
Overstocked with scraggly washed-out ghost gloves,
overstocked like a scummy backyard pond that can’t support
all those tumbling fire-skinned koi.

But you know what? Joke’s on them because oh, Jenny Lewis,
you’re crooning that special brand of charming & absurd Los Angeles
folk rock, breath sweet as SoCo, sweeter, bending over me,
yeah, and you know how to handle that little blue blue washing blue
skirt too. You tell me, girl, you are so much finer
than those bitches they married, and I say, oh, stop, Jenny,
I’m sure they’re really nice girls! And you say, No, you are so awesome
and Does that guy even remember that he proposed to you first? and I bet
not I bet I am going to go tell everyone & you spill the pitcher
trying to get onto the table& I have to pull you down, giggling,
shhh, Jenny, shhh, shut up and drink your drink. You roll
your eyes and say, don’t be lame, we’re getting shots. So we get a little litany
of Jack Daniel’s going and you grab
my arm & we are swaying back & forth to the Loretta Lynn that’s slipping
from the jukebox, and I look you straight in the eye & slur,
when you were singing about being in somebody else’s clothes you meant that living
out of a suitcase for too long can make you selfish, right? You know, I have lived
in five different states and three different countries in the very recent
past and peripatetic is a nice word for vagrant is a nice
way of running away from yourself. & when you tell
how it is about wondering if you’re one guy’s wet nap but also believing
that you’re another guy’s bad news, I hear you,
Jenny, I hear you in your little golden pool of 72º West Coast wisdom.
Jess, you say, just drain the goddamn pond,
you’ll never get rid of that algae problem anyway.

You know what, Jenny? I’ll order us up another pitcher so you can go ahead & whatever, get up on the table, do it, be the one to tell the gents that by-the-way January first, twenty-eleven? Spelled out doesn’t even look that good.

Jess Novak lives in Tallahassee, Florida, where she is pursuing an MFA in poetry at Florida State University. Her work is forthcoming in the anthology Milk and Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry.   

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