SURGERY ON MONDAY MORNING - Ranina Simon

i’m mourning the fact that i cannot write anything revolutionary

right now—

i am simply too content

too idle

when the old man who knows the owner orders

an oat cappuccino and a nutella bomboloni

and reads me his poem. just three lines

about ascending after death

but my envy flickers

like a tulip blooming from rippling grounds

until he says he wrote it about his brother

who may not be alright after today.

beyond the glass, snowflakes sprinkle a cherry-red beetle

people ruffle dandelion fluff from their hair

and a brother’s veins run clear with saline

as the man sits with his pastry stuffed so full with chocolate that it

bursts

all over his fingers on the first bite.

for a moment just long enough to read a tercet aloud

the man curses these damn sugar granules

burrowing under his nails

to dissolve and die;

his brother’s chest splits open in deference to a scalpel;

the jealous poet slams a puck into the trash.

in this moment

the man loses to the greater of two foes—

not the thing curdling under his brother’s skin but

the overzealous donut

bleeding sweetly in his hands.