Across a Table

By Steven Cordova Steven Cordova

“I’m glad you’re positive.”

“I’m glad you’re positive,

too, though, of course, I wish

you weren’t.” I wish you weren’t

either is the response I expect,

and you say nothing.

And who can blame you?

Not me. I’m not the one

who’ll call you after dinner and a movie.

You’re not the one who’ll call me.

We both know we have

that—what?—that ultimate date

one night to come, one bright morning.

Who can blame us? Not the forks

and not the knives that carry on

and do the heavy lifting now.

"Across a Table" by Steven Cordova from The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry, edited by Francisco Aragón. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007). Used by permission of the author.

Source: The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (The University of Arizona Press, 2007)

Biography

Steven Cordova’s first collection of poetry is Long Distance (2010). He is the author of the chapbook Slow Dissolve (2003), and his poems have appeared in various journals and anthologies, including Barrow Street, Calalloo, Cimarro Review, The Journal, and Northwest Review. Cordova edited the anthology, Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English (2000). He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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