Alcohol
       

I.

I remember the stale smell of urine and skin
in the heat of the boiler room

my superintendent father's broom
shooing out two men

bums he called them to my mother
who scrubbed the floor with bleach

and years later a party where my father
drank so much he
couldn't fit the key into the car door

my mother begging let me drive
me in the backseat not knowing

alcohol had reduced the force
at which his heart beat
and was seeping into his lungs
to fill our vehicle with haze

II.

in excess everything is poison
even kale or water
I could live without vodka brandy

rum without vanilla extract without beer
and more sadly without wine
and its inspiring

you've never hung me over
although one night in a hilltop restaurant
after a waiter plied me with five courses

and five glasses of wine
I refused to pay a bet I lost

waving my arms like fumes
I did not like the person I became

you are ready and waiting
any time of the year or day

if only science would make yeast not
ferment sugar surely easier
than cloning sheep or curing ebola

leavened bread a small sacrifice
for reimagining the earth

as ancient north America or Australia
where tribes had no brewing

a clump of soft fur
at the back of the throat
music that shifts from ditty to dirge

I suspect my gripe is not with you
but with the fact that humans
are not only the animals

who often don't know when to stop
but are also the only
animals who understand why they can't

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Copyright © 2020 Natasha Sajé All rights reserved
from Southern Indiana Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission