Faded posters of luxury liners,
palm trees and Tahitian girls
in yellow sarongs, offering
white frangipanni leis.
gales spew sinews of rain,
strings of a mangled sitar
riffed by thunder—
doomed toy whose cloudy wood
fractures while it plays,
Red is not only red it
is the color of scent it
is the color of the French
spoken in my childhood
“J’aime le vin rouge, merci,”
the red wine I drink with my mother
never enough to fill the red pang
I use the base of both of my palms
to press against the bottom of the bulb.
The garlic opens into cloves that splay
across the grain of the cutting board.