Hazelnuts
It’s beautiful; this hot
hazelnut coffee,
made with sweet syrup
and no hazelnuts at all, tasting
nothing like hazelnuts
and much like the future
which bangs outside, brassy,
band and big.
It’s sunlight and slamming
the pavements, slamming the window
and slamming your hands
on the coffeeshop table
like the clip
of a closing pianolid,
and you’ve gotten two messages
since sitting down,
and both of them have been good; delicious
like false hazel. it’s a wonderful thought,
isn’t it,
that all through the future
we will still have sun
on the street outside, and
good messages coming, still have coffee
which tastes
something like hazelnuts, and no hazelnuts
floating in our coffee.
DS Maolalai has been nominated for Best of the Web and twice for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016) and “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019)
Bindweed Magazine 