A White Bowl
Lis Sanchez
| poetry
Dawn. Waiting for you at the café
among the whitewashed posadas. Shadows stir
with dim awakenings.
I have chosen for you
a miniature sea of white
chowder. Tentacles sapped of color cling to the spoon
submerged in the white bowl.
I have a small fever.
Noon. The stunned face of the inn wavers
with heat. Behind its wall, our spavined bed. In the bowl
limpets float like wan knuckles.
When I want
my hands to unclasp, they won’t.
Footsteps ring near. My skin tenses. Sweating through
his shirt, the waiter says,
There’s no more water.
Fever grips me. I ask him to leave
the bowl. I know what’s left is no good. With a gesture
he clears bowl, spoon, cloth.
¿Qué más? he asks.
Once, you cut your palm vaulting a white wall
to pinch a spray of bougainvillea.
I can’t say what else—
only that red sprig vacillating in your hands
echoes through the street.
Lis Sanchez has writing in Prairie Schooner, New Orleans Review, The Bark, Puerto Del Sol, and elsewhere. Awards include a North Carolina Arts Council Writer’s Fellowship; Prairie Schooner’s Virginia Faulkner Award; Nimrod’s Editors’ Choice Award, and others.