THAT

Tea with a Friend and Her Husband
A.C. Warner
Smiling, with the movements her grandmother made,
she pours the tea, remembers the sugar,
pursing her lips in lovely disgust
at the idea of lemon—
though a need of tangy constriction
breaks like a sob elocution’s
regular ripple.
How could I tell, unless I knew,
as the wide spread tongs sink viciously
into the sugar, like your knees in the sand,
that before you took your mass produced cups
with grandma’s meaningless pattern,
and set them straight—inverted breasts—
on the tight starched cloth that suits your blouse,
you were a glass blower.
You made great green balloons
that shattered air;
you made white lilies
that were good for nothing
but to take the sun down their swelling
throats.
Where is the sunlight
you caught in orange, and gave to children
a harmless fire—lumpy, disfigured, no two alike.
Can’t you admit once you want the lemon I squeezed
with my hands, with the soft shrieks of joy from the fruit—?
If the impossible happened, and I forced open
your mouth to find you huddled and crying,
56 THAT