Reading Borges

Certain things I know by rote—
One cup of coffee
Brewed weak with milk,
The long red light at the corner,
And what both my husbands—living and dead—
Complain about.
The collected Borges
Lies on the coffee table
Earmarked at page three hundred seventy-seven.
My brother has sent a postcard,
My second husband
Beats me at Chinese checkers
On the second game.
I want to make love,
I want enough money
To fall under the delusion
That things will stay the way they are,
That my daughter's friend's mother
Will be cured by the chemotherapy,
That suddenly and without any effort on my part
The backyard will be both lush and manicured.
And the new back neighbor
Will stop acting like the old back neighbor
Fighting with me about the boundary wall.
There are only nine black marbles for Chinese checkers
Replace the missing one with white.
The postcard is of a diner
In upstate New York.
The Borghese poem
Is about Buenos Aires and death.
If you were in that diner
You could order toast and eggs.
So much is impossible.
The saints say
It is better to concentrate,
I myself have been to K-mart
And bought two very cheap silk men's shirts.

© Miriam Sagan