the night we invented champagne
MIKE LEWIS-BECK
it wasn’t just the baby bubbles,
the smell of baked bread
let loose as they popped,
a crackling in my head like night
sky on the fourth of July.
You tapped my Widow’s Peak
with your wet pinkie— three times—
a lone gesture,
a secret code bringing
me back to earth—it’s moisture.
I knew you loved
the sky as we saw it
that night when we shook the star diamonds
down like olives to earth.
Shook the wine vines, freed the grapes.
The sipping, sipping more,
never full, never drunk
from the new god we sought—
I couldn’t hold my tongue.
Mike Lewis-Beck writes from Iowa City. He has pieces in American Journal of Poetry, Alexandria Quarterly, Apalachee Review, Blue Collar Review, Cortland Review, Chariton Review, Eastern Iowa Review, Guesthouse, Heavy Feather Review, Inquisitive Eater, Pure Slush, Pilgrimage, Seminary Ridge Review, Taos Journal of International Poetry and Art, and Wapsipinicon Almanac, among other venues. He has a book of poems, Rural Routes, recently published by Alexandria Quarterly Press.