Rebecca Farivar
Noon
Stop eating
in a panic.
No one will take
the food
off your lap.
Don’t worry
about the others
with arms.
They feel armless.
Let’s all go
to an orchard
and touch
a peach.
All of us.
Together.
We’ll feel better.
We’ll say, “This
is the best
of both worlds”
though really
there’s only one
and we know it.
Gut
I cut a hole
in my shirt
to see color
cut a hole
in the color
to see more
color. It never
occurred to me
that fish
have hearts
until I saw one
free and beating
cupped
in a human hand.
When I was in Vienna, my friends and I went to the weekly flea market at the Naschmarkt. We each decided that we'd try to find something at the flea market and I chose to look for the components of a traditional Viennese coffee set (silver tray, espresso cup, and tiny cream pourer). I found pourer right way, but the rest was more elusive. At the last table I looked at, I found the perfect silver tray, but ended up leaving the market without the cup. A week later when I was in Istanbul, I found a cup to complete the set, so now I have a complete, multicultural coffee set that reminds me of both places.
Rebecca Farivar is the author of Correct Animal (Octopus Books, 2011) and chapbooks Am Rhein (Burnside Review, 2013) and American Lit (Dancing Girl Press, 2011). Individual poems have most recently appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Salt Hill, and Birdfeast. She lives in Oakland, CA.