Howard Kogan

Say Grace

What I like about Grace is that she’s easy
to be with the way girls who like guys are
she has a combination of sweet ingenue looks
with a sparingly used, but perfectly timed mouth
like a trucker I find endlessly entertaining.
We’d dated years ago, married others, divorced.
When we met again, she seemed the same Grace
except for the addition of a very noticeable cross.
We went out to dinner, had fun knocking our ex’s,
I wondered why we’d stopped seeing each other.
I couldn’t remember.  Grace couldn’t remember.
We’d made love back when we were seeing each other
and I was thinking, Let’s go back to my place,
but didn’t say it because it was early and that cross.
When dinner arrived, Grace asked me to say Grace,
I said, I’m a little rusty, you say it.  She did.
I went back to thinking about her coming to my place.
She had a different plan, she wanted me to come to
a Bible study class the next evening.  I told her my plan.
She said, I’m born again; I don’t do that anymore,
not outside the sanctified state of holy matrimony.
Come to my Bible study, you’ll love our Pastor!
After that, I asked, can we go to my place?
She was getting pissed; Listen,
no one can enter the temple of my body
now without first fucking marrying me.

I couldn’t help but smile, she was irresistible.
What?  She said.
I was thinking of Oscar Levant’s line about Doris Day,
I knew her before she was a virgin.
She smiled.
I asked, What time’s the class?

 

Howard J Kogan is a retired psychotherapist and poet.  He and his wife Libby currently live in Ashland, Massachusetts.  His books of poetry, Indian Summer and A Chill in the Air are available from Square Circle Press.  His novel, No View, is available from Amazon.