Amanda Cobb

YOU OWE ME A COKE

I married before I knew I preferred cats to dogs.
Your ex became a #1 shaman
when she threw you away.
Since then, luck. We begin to anticipate
the start and stick of words. You win
and I believe in knocking on wood,
bread and butter, salt on the tail of a bird—
so we drink and mean it.

What got us here:
simultaneity of our absolutions
and love so that I win too sometimes.

Though we’ll be owing our whole lives,
we’ll be dressing the same before we know it.
The days get dark.
The flies move less.
I could stop speaking altogether.
But I make a divot for every time I sound like me,
hammer out my belly like a steel drum
and sing carnival, car ni val.

And though I may worry about cracks and fizz,
you can cheer me up on the up-swing of the clock:
Once by going away and twice
by coming back.

______________________________

Amanda Cobb’s work has appeared in Verse Magazine online, Arts & Letters, Pebble Lake Review, Controlled Burn, Georgetown Review, Tygerburning and others. She was selected as the AWP Intro Prize winner in 2007 and have been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes. She teaches English Composition and Creative Writing at West Virginia, where shes live with her husband and four children.