[A] spider in the evening brings worries.
—National Folk Museum of Korea

Mid-meal, I think of when
she made me noodles—iced
beef broth with julienne
cucumber, radish, sliced
Korean pear—since while
her legs would have sufficed
to lasso me, her style
was not to trust in fate:
silk pillows, jazz, long pile,
tea lights, precisely eight,
and then a bite-size spread;
so why cut short this date
to loop the Smiths instead?
I spied a closet full of rope
and fled.

————

David Elliot Eisenstat’s poems have appeared in Midway Journal, The Pierian, and Rust & Moth, among others. A Poetry Editor for Variant Lit, he lives in Brooklyn. Find more of his work at https://www.davideisenstat.com/poetry/. Photo credit: @KathrynCooperWeddings on Instagram.