Coffee Sestina by Annie Zaidi
Let us agree for once. Let’s stick to this and that,
gossip about celebrity, not look each other in the eye,
not repeat mistakes that bloat into the cruel
everyday songs we hum without bitterness.
Let’s not slip off our platonic track of coffee.
I’ll dig up my old smile; you can send me home in a train.
Tonight, let us go to some friendly café to train
ourselves in ways of meeting, speak in tongues that
we dared not use before—toss about jokes about your mother’s eye,
laugh without sadness at how our wisdom was cruelly
won on the streets. Let’s not say anything about being bitter.
We can drink ourselves blue one day. Tonight, stick with coffee.
There’s Monday to belt up against—exuberant moaning about the coffee
machine, recycled shit in the canteen, the intern who took eight months’ training
and went to a rival firm. The working week is a washboard that
bruises our face until we are too numb to look around with leaky eyes.
All week, I yank newspapers off the doormat, glance at other cruelties,
bigger calamities, and boil the morning tea until it grows bitter.
I talk to you of brothers and sisters to whom is pledged our citizen’s blood—bitter
bursts of gunfire; stoning; immolations; leaps from high-rises. Goat-shit coffee
becomes a new tonic, our private healing as we sing the nation’s blues, following trains
of damaged histories. Perhaps we will feel lucky. At least we are not content in that
horrid bourgeoisie way. At least there is hunger and pain shining in our eyes.
At least it’s not belladonna, or cocaine, or a sensex high, nothing so small or cruel.
Let’s admit we like being difficult. We are determined that everyday cruelty
and a worldly world will not change us. We’ll ask for jugs of milk to make bitter
Ethiopian brews palatable, for the world is full of unreasonable coffee.
It makes our gut lurch with disbelief. Once we have somehow trained
our tongues to grow sweet in recompense, we’ll settle for a fair trade brew that
costs too much. We’ll drink it, make a face, complain about dust, noise, dry eyes.
I promise. When you see me next, it will not be with monsoon eyes.
Just let the full moon wear out its fat peasant shine and drift into a cruel
eclipse, so my longing sees no luminous metaphor. Nothing but a bitter
black void. Just let this dense night slide off my balcony. I’ll brew some coffee,
pick up the phone. Your voice will be full with relief. I’ll take the train
down to your grubby, hustling suburb. And then, that will be that.
Remember, it began that way—a hustle in a grubby town grown bitter
with what it wants, cruel with what it couldn’t keep. Come, let’s look for coffee.
It’s hard to train the heart but, with time, our eyes will calmly learn to meet.
Art by Joanne Nam
Recommended listening: Read, Eat, Sleep - The Books
Links of the Day: Enid Blyton, Moral Guide How to Subtly F*ck With People: An Illustrated Guide to Being Your Worst Self America’s obsession with adult coloring is a cry for help