My Cup Runneth Over

By Connie Baechler

First, the Jim Beam,
filling the cup halfway,
sipping with face contorted,
twelve-year-old lips curled
in a drinker's grimace.

In movies, drinks contain fruit
or perhaps an olive,
its single eye peering
at the supplicant
who seeks
prostration with a little adornment.

My larder holds no olives
but overflows with fruit.
I add a cherry to my cup;
its crimson cheek winks,
promising sweetness
which dissolves in the liquor,
leaving no imprint.

Next, I drop in cubes of pineapple;
these embalm themselves
in the amber liquid:
engendering no improvement.

Frantic, I use chunks of pulpy grapefruit,
bits of flotsam in a grotesque Pacific.
The liquor rises to the rim,
but the bitterness remains.

I sit at the scarred table,
plop,
        plop,
goes the cherry —
a ruby globe
            bobbing
on my father's Eden.