A Poker Poem

by Alex Gallo-Brown

Pockets Poker Club, Portland, Oregon.
I sit around the corner,
picking poppy seeds out of a muffin
and savoring the sharpness
of my black, black coffee.
Just now
in order to remember the name of the club,
in order to begin this poem,
I had to check my cell phone,
where I had the number saved.
You know, swarmed by impending joy,
the function of memory blurs.
Swimming in an ooze of pleasure,
the mind necessarily dims and retracts,
even as it understands
all too clearly
the temporary nature
of the ooze.
Understanding more than it knows,
the mind moves toward the game,
reveling in the content of no context,
in a present detached from its history.