Nancy Mitchell: Mornings Were Vodka

orange sunrise until the day she said baby,
ah, I think I want.

He kissed her hand then began
in stages to delay:

after the essay on Hemingway
was finished, any day now,

and then, when, fingers crossed,
a publisher came through,

don’t forget the lecture, not
yet written, on

the connection between the mall
and the middle ages

for the summer conference in Prague,
and of course the iron

rail for the patio he’d have to
learn black smithing

to do, his design so wrought
in calligraphy and curlicued.

—

Copyright 2015 Nancy Mitchell. First published in the Delaware Poetry Review.