The Mark Made by the Whiskey Glass by Athar C. Pavis

The mark made by the whiskey glass

reminds me of you

and all the hand-wringing, unsaid reproach

I swallowed hard. What do I care now

if there’s a ring on the wood veneer

what do I care —

though it’s true I did care then

and held my peace. Even when you were here

I was afraid you might not be.

The mark made by the whiskey glass

reminds me

of watching the fog descend

and you inside half-sleeping on the couch —

of evening’s pause before the black stamps out

the island’s contour and obliterates

horizons of the forest, sky, and sea

in one blank dome,

of the full tide gone starboard to its grave,

of a hundred things I could have said

before night came — of you, alone,

holding it back with everything you had

heroically, of what I meant to save:

The mark made by the whiskey glass

when the mist rises and I have the day

is all I have.                   

---

Athar C. Pavis is an American poet who grew up in Brooklyn. She studied Provençal poetry and later did research on Proust, attended the Sciences Po in Paris, and  taught at the Sorbonne and the Quai d'Orsay. Her  poems have been published in Five Points, Slant, Able Muse Review and elsewhere.

Posted on 21st November 2023