I Really Liked Your Reading Last Night

You came alone and sat at the back of the room.

We gave each other a friendly hug
and chatted before the show. Your breath smelled

thinly of gin. “There are a lot of good poets,”
you said and smiled, by way of slant reply,

after I’d commended your performance.
It’s slant like that

that makes one
feel disclosed.

You didn’t introduce your poems,
just read them in a modulated tone

“I” embedded,
hunkered down: a foreign correspondent in a war zone.

I wanted a book, you didn’t have one to sell.
We both had salvation in pieces we read.

I couched it
Salvia divinorum, as in the psychoactive plant.

You used the word straight-up—like you had earned it.