the paper clips ease

themselves loose.  

Let go of the paperwork.

Grab a cab uptown

to a jazz club, where

a mean trombone

vibrates up and down

and around their spines,

plays reveille to lust.

Music moves them to tears

and heavy drinking.

Some slip into back rooms, alleys,

or endless reminiscing.

Some are never heard from again.

Before the sober sun

can nag, they stagger

back to work. Try to find

the same cube, same desk,

same report. A few lie

unconscious on the floor.

Tonight they’ll do it all again.

We put up with it,

because a paperclip

that goes straight

is no use at all.

© (2019) Alarie Tennille. First published in I-70 Review.

find a fruit fly floating 

in my lush, French pinot noir, 

one of our wines of the month from Underdog. 

(I’m not making that up.) Now the underdog 

is little FF.

As I tip the wine toward my mouth,

I keep watch. I don’t want to swallow him 

any more than I want to sacrifice good wine. 

Every time the wine comes toward me, he floats back. 

Hello. Goodbye. Hello. Goodbye.

I try to catch him on dry glass – 

offer escape if he’s alive.

I dip a finger in and scoop him out. 

He staggers over soft hand, hard nail. 

Is he drunk or just half drowned? 

He struggles to flutter wings – too soggy. 

I blow on him, trying to help. 

My gale force carries him off.

He lands on my lap throw – 

a wine-colored desert. 

He wanders up and down dunes, 

away from me, then back       for ten minutes. 

(Probably forty years to a fruit fly.) 

I blow more gently. 

Come on, little buddy, I whisper. 

(Wouldn’t want anyone but him to hear.)

He lifts off!

© (2022) Alarie Tennille. First published in I-70 Review

the way you return from errands

with a present – a Danish, book, or bottle

of champagne

how you thank me for every meal 

from coq au vin to a ham sandwich

and make coworkers think 

I’m Julia Child

hearing your voice in conversation 

downstairs before realizing 

that you’re talking to the cats

 in the same serious tone you use 

with plumbers

how you told me I was funny long before 

anyone else did

that time in France when I said our waiter 

looked like Orlando Bloom and you answered 

then we’ll have to come back tomorrow

the fun of reading a book you’ve just finished

and finding oops! duh! or what a jerk!

penciled in the margin

the way you reach for my hand

before crossing the street 

how you describe every dark-eyed

brunette – she looks like you – no matter

how silver I go.

No wonder forty years have sneaked by.

© 2019 Alarie Tennille. First published in Minute Magazine

itself in a knot just to keep

black folks there at Gee’s 

Bend while time and fortune 

swept on by.

And Master Pettway gave

those folks his name, 

but stripped everything else 

he could. Left just scraps, 

but they were used to that.

So those hands that hardly 

needed something else to do

unraveled their worn-out

world. Pieced together

remnants of Africa

and raggedy dreams 

to make something new.

Let dress tails dance

with britches – heat from

the cotton fields pressed

deep in their seams.

So tired of plowed furrows,

they let their stitches bend

now and then just like

that river. Nothing perfect,  

yet God was in the details.

And the quilters called that

making do and visiting and

keeping warm and pulling up

memories each night, 

till one day they were told – 

we call that art.

© 2008 Alarie Tennille

First published in Poetry East

Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize,

poem of the month in a Goodreads poetry contest.