Winners of the 2009 Davis Demitasse Poetry Contest

There are so many ways to ruin something good.
    So few to make it right.

I stopped believing in wine a long time ago:
The corkscrew too easy, the swallow too smooth
on any Friday night in some dim-lit kitchen,
tired restaurant, deserted dormitory.

That medicine is all the same. Rx: Drink me
As if anywhere with anyone could mean
anything. And after awhile you start to learn,
like the rooster, how hard it is to rise again.

I cannot drink that drink, face that fatal flow
of things kept compartmentalized. One bottle
 a meal, One man a bottle, One nothing in the end
and so American it goes; alone, alone,  alone.

There is a kind of love that kills, and, yes,
there are other thinkgs. The sweaty palm
of the local boy as he extends the portafilter,
under pressure to finish work others have begun.

Twenty hands around the cup he passes off.
Melting pot, four countries and forty traditions
swimming together in a twenty-seven second stream.
This medicine different, stronger than being self-made.

Life and death, this drink. Once through the fire
Here destroyed again. Broken down the burns
Crushed. Through hell then high water, all for the
three minute triumph, the rising again to your lips.

I sued to sip down one man's vineyard until
I realized: One man will always let you down.
Until I began to believe in someone else's fingertips,
in lost privacy, and in the daily certainty of error.

In the end, someone will always let you down.
On that day, that normal day, may you find yourself
brushing hands with the eager twenty-something
smiling softly as he sees the crema start to slide.

You're not asking if a coffee house creates an entire neighborhood? A world?

 wait, now recalling, in the fair cream white of a flowing S. F. morning, at Grant
Street, up from Washington Square, Union. At the top of North Beach

the corner on which the sun shown more, until the shadows stretched into the fog-
cluttered afternoon. That would be Malvina's, Malvina's for cappuccino
probably you went to the Atlas later in the day for espresso, a marsala. Lots of dark suits,
older guys. Malvina's was the morning draw.

Gine for a while at the counter. And a slice of panetone toasted, why not, crisp in the
pizza oven. Raisons, citron, pine nuts back then. Butter slid onto the plate, greasy gold

sit with a capp, the base roasted to malignancy, no different from Cialde's in wooden
drawers, oily, stained, beans glistening with evil,  down the street

Malvina's door with a post on the very corner for the bay window of the flat directly
above, where I would sit, if I could,  with my kid when she was small. Two regular sizes
couldn't squeeze at our small corner table

lucky to score the corner, Malvina's, Saturday early, always, a cappuccino each, the price
soaring from 50 to 55 cents, so remorseless, and we learned the way of things to come

but then, Malvina often herself behind the counter, and neither she nor Franco, who was
always there, regarded our presence, we were just there

there, me feeling in the corner, before the counter, at the door, tinkling the tiny spoon on
the brown cup, command of my world

at the top of that world, the feeling slipped out of there, just as that Malvina's and
Malvina, gone.

An old man in any time, his hands were like gods
His feet coming, like songs of mercy
His eyes, sour from sun, no better than dogs'

He was, like all saviors, a king and the least among them

Into his ears they poured their longing
	for true shapes in the world
	and he listened, like water listens

He blessed the hunt but burdened the hunters
He was, as his name insists, ever-present and
	a thing left behind

The women called him The Old Goat

On that day, he drifted away from the morning fire
	one arm outstretched like the night watch
	pointing at devils in the high grass and mist

They were in fresh lands unknown
They were fleeing the dry death of drought
They spoke of abandoning spirits
They pretended not to notice he was gone

His voice returned before him with the rising stars
	screeching like a bandit bird
	then singing like a new mother

The men stood in a fierce line against the approach

He grew out of the dim light, first running, then spinning
	then raising his knees and pointing his toes
	as in the praying for rain

He spilled small red fruit from his bag
	his mouth was full and dripping as he laughed
	his face was as wide and white as the noon

Frightened, the children soothed one another with whispers:
	it is only the prophet gone mad
	it only an old dancing goat