VERY SUPERSTITIOUS

Dissolve: salt of days on a hollow tongue.
Waitress knocks over the shaker & fails
to throw a blind pinch over her shoulder.
Doesn’t know, doesn’t care. You knock on wood
& find plastic. You still avoid a hat
on a bed, but only because you have
a hat to go awry, a bed that longs
for it. All thinking magical, & just
as dissolved & hollow as the echo
of strange spices, the memory of taste.
To describe it is somehow to betray,
a jinx. Better to play a sort of Sphinx,
whispering secrets too softly to hear.
Better sorry than safe. Pass the pepper.