The Budding Cubist

That night, she has a name for everything:
hair falls in her face glibly and drinks feel fetching;
she designates me retriever. She speaks
and became more abstract. She toasts to the worst
kind of sophist, knowing neither himself
nor the matter at hand and she takes a shot.
She compares herself to twenty-something Hitler
kampf-ing mein way around Vienna. She sips
and says she is like a reddish Polaroid
sitting in a sauna, curling at the edges
and coming into herself. She talks as she jerks
forward, the driver of an automobile hit
from behind, crashing into the table.
A rose-filtered vision of a cross-legged man
hunched over a guitar replaced previous lust,
the whiplash snap of sudden forward progress,
a forced opening of eyes. Urgh she says
and everybody stood still. I held her until
she makes it to the car, and when we arrive
I play for her the patient blues.