David Kirby

Let Me Count the Ways

The two truest things ever are that, first,
one day you’ll meet a certain someone
and you know from the very first moment
that you’ll want to spend the rest of your life
without them and, second, those cartoon figures
on bathroom doors just don’t make any sense:
there’s the one with the pants who’s supposed
to be a man and the other with that
triangle thing that’s supposed to be a skirt
but not a skirt of the type anyone has worn
in the last 75 years and besides, look around,
anybody can wear anything these days,
which is why I was relieved when the bar
where we have our poetry readings.
just changed its bathrooms to unisex.
Good idea, right? Just go in and do
your business. Who’s gonna barge over
and say, Wow—look at that !
or I feel sorry for you, man. Or miss,
or whoever you are. Besides, you get
better ideas for poems in unisex bathrooms:
the other night I stepped past two women
in a tipsy embrace next to the sinks,
closed the stall door behind me, and began
to address the purpose for which I’d come
in the first place only to hear one woman
say to the other, I think we have room
for him in our relationship, don’t you?
and the other say, Um, I’m not so sure.
Oh, love. You’re everywhere, aren’t you?
And you take so many forms. You have to:
dogs don’t chase parked cars, you can’t clap
with one hand, it takes two to tango, and actually
you can clap with one hand if the person
sitting alongside claps along with you.
My darling, I love you to death, also to pieces.
I love you the way garlic loves the knife
you use when you’re slicing garlic and then
decide you want an apple but forget
and slice it with the garlic knife
just as that certain someone walks into
the kitchen and says, Ooo, apple—
can I have some? and you say Yeah, sure
and they say, Thanks! and think,
Um, garlic. A friend told me she took
a walk in the park the other day with her
person/not yet boyfriend/thing/person
to which my response was Boy, that covers
a lot of ground and also That’s it in a nutshell,
seeing as how even after years we never
really know what the other person
is thinking but especially not at the start
of a relationship, and I mentioned this
the other day in a class consisting mainly
of young women who are trying to figure out
who they are to themselves but also
to other people, and when I told them about
my friend who was taking a walk with
her person/not yet boyfriend/thing/person,
they shrieked with joy and said, That’s it!
That’s it exactly! That’s them, though,
not us. I love you so matcha. I love you
the way pumpkin spice lattes love
sweatpants. My heart’s so full of emojis
when I’m around you! I love you the way
Adam loved Steve in the Garden
of Eden, the way Abraham loved Isaac.
I love that God tested Abraham,
though when I read my Bible these days,
I read it as texted him.

David Kirby teaches at Florida State University. His latest books are a poetry collection, Help Me, Information, and a textbook modestly entitled The Knowledge: Where Poems Come From and How to Write Them. Kirby is also the author of Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll, which the Times Literary Supplement described as “a hymn of praise to the emancipatory power of nonsense.” He is currently on the editorial board of Alice James Books.