Paris Preparedness Class
BY KYLAN RICE

All I know is that everything
I say sleeps together.
It's the same dark
coffee yesterday, today and tomorrow
and I forget about cream as if
it were the dream of a body.
However lonely I was before,
the waiters just get more sexual
bringing me sugar without
any intention of sticking it
into my cup. All I know
is how to get home.
All I know is how women
remove their gloves at the bar,
stripping them off like birds.
If I wanted to nab any of them at a beach,
their joyless breasts would say to me:
noise, water, meat—that's it.
My waiter is sincere
when he remarks how the light
at this time of night is a dress
that shuts interminably.
He says the mouth is a tool—  
root for it. Use it to tell me
I have a nice ass when no one is looking.
Say with it mercy more often.
When I look up to thank him,
he smiles like a woman.
He says to me: keep
the change—give us
grace instead.

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Kylan Rice has poetry published or forthcoming in The Examined Life, Thrush, decomP magazinE, Brusque Magazine, and elsewhere. He is editor for Likewise Folio. He lives in Utah.