Odds
Maybe not the redbuds
that barely made it through the winter
and now cloud the sky with purple,
but running into a friend
in a shop in a foreign city,
neither of your hotels on
that side of town,
and there was a woman
you crossed paths with
on your ways to separate meetings
whom you married three years later.
And yet so many are averse to gambling,
even though the odds,
even in Vegas,
are not nearly as ridiculously high.
Is it because the gods do not value
the calculated risk, the hoped-for
success? Does it need to be random
beyond imagination?
It was the day after your friend
got engaged, and your wife was
with you to hear the news. Who
could have foretold the four of you
sitting in the back of a gelateria
talking about mundane things,
how you and her fiancé
went to the same college,
how the three of them had cups—
chocolate, Stracciatella, some kind
of fruit—while you had
a coffee and coconut cone, all
of you consuming something
impossible, what would
both melt and last forever?
Gourmet
“coulant” of white asparagus and egg yolk
Smoother than mousse,
not quite as firm as custard—
beneath it, the yolk
you can’t yet see,
ready to spill from
itself at the slightest touch,
and then the colors
swirling together
beneath the surface.
Your mouth should
always respect,
savor,
connotations,
the way words,
considered carefully,
“measured,” they say,
like ingredients,
blend flavors,
as if you will never
get a second chance,
since the dish cannot be unmade,
as if the world—
this is true—
depends on it.
Jack Stewart was educated at the University of Alabama and Emory University and was a Brittain Fellow at The Georgia Institute of Technology. His first book, No Reason, was published by the Poeima Poetry Series in 2020, and his work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Poetry, The American Literary Review, Nimrod, Image, and others. He currently runs the Talented Writers Program at Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
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