Liquid

There was this website
with essays about the word “liquid”
and what it meant to the writers
and one wrote about how he hated coffee,
how as an adult he was expected
to drink it and like it
and how much it sucked—
that’s the way I feel about beer—

and a woman wrote about her dependence
on alcohol and childhood memories
of being adorable,

and another guy wrote an allegory
about salt and seawater and body fluids
and the need to submerge and dissolve
and the last essay was about liquid capital
and money and how it affected all of us

and all I could think of was liquid
spilling when barriers broke
to settle in forlorn puddles
far from its origins,
or sinking into the ground without a trace,
and streams of refugees
flowing across borders,
armies assaulting in waves,
guerillas disappearing into the cracked rocks
or into the underground.
I thought about the word
“liquidate.”

©2004 F.J. Bergmann

"Liquid" appeared in the State Street Poetry Sheet Vol. 3 #5


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