Citric Acid
An Online Orange County Literary Arts Quarterly of Imagination and Reimagination
Yet Again
by Chris Davidson
I apologize. I will do it again, both what
I apologized for, and apologize.
A door hinge falling out because of a screw
that’s stripped the wood it’s in must be fixed,
if you want to keep that door in the jamb.
A table leg a skosh short making the table
wobble needs attention becoming action.
A loose plug in the jack of the amp is tightened.
A broken mug: Glue it together or throw it away.
I don’t want to throw it away. I want it fixed.
I bought it in New York, when I was away
from those I apologize to most, those to whom
I owe the most apologies even when I don’t
say I’m sorry, and I don’t say I’m sorry
for everything. The mug was an apology,
in the other sense: a defense of a way of life,
a faith, a theology lived in repeated practice.
Like the coffee you fill it with each new day.
Solstice, & the Great Conversion
by Chris Davidson
Shortest day of the year, and I feel nothing of
any turn in things toward a new and better way.
Two planets came close to each other in the sky
beyond the streetlight before our house,
so much light pollution, but still I saw them,
my wife saw them, my son saw them:
Saturn, with its rings, like a white insect in flight,
and Jupiter, larger with three of its moons
in view. The rings and the moons looked
arranged in the same direction, held together,
thrown out of shape by gravity.
There’s a pagan ritual people did tonight,
somewhere, formally. They do it every year.
As for me, I drank wine, bourbon, walked the dog
and watched a movie: nightly pagan ritual.
I am beseeching the gods for time, to help manage
the time, my body thrown out of shape by gravity.
My wife said the planets kept leaving the eyepiece.
To find them again, you move the arm around,
the cheap, shaking telescope blurring them before
settling them back into impossible brightness,
like a coin coming to rest after spinning like a top,
like a man falling asleep after a troubled day.
Ben Franklin, Vegetarian
by Chris Davidson
His boat lay becalmed off Block Island.
The crew caught and cooked some cod.
The scent of its singed flesh pulled his mind
Toward the man he used to be:
He used to eat meat. Applying his mind
To what he saw minutes before—on the deck,
Inert before the knife, the caught fish cut
To reveal inside smaller fish the fish
Themselves had eaten—he reasoned that
These creatures, who regard their own
As suitable food, may thereby be regarded by men
As suitable food. He dined “most heartily”
Upon their singed flesh, grateful for Reason,
The fortune of it, the fortune of good weather
Unmentioned, the boat upon which he dined
Becalmed, Block Island just yonder.
Guides
by Chris Davidson
Tétouan, October 2022
The last portion of lentil soup
in the tiny restaurant I would not
have tasted if not guided by a local—
a ten-year local, a transplant
himself from elsewhere—who has
learned the history of the marketplace that
under its tall, white arch is crowded
with flowers, red roses in
bouquets and buckets, sign to me that within
wasn’t food but flowers, lots
of them. Entering the narrow street to
where I sleep each night
you cross under a similar, smaller
arched opening, where men sell
scant wares on folding tables,
cigarettes by the smoke, packages of cookies.
I’d have missed that, too, thinking
the opening another storefront,
small marketplace, but for my guide
the night of my arrival. He helped me
see what without him would have
stayed hidden. I’ve had guides
from the beginning. One in particular,
not involved at the beginning as much
as he might have been, is now gone
from this world, my father.
Near the the end it was me, among others,
leading him to a gate I could not
enter, confident he’d find his way,
wavering. What nourishment or rest
waits through that archway I
cannot say. I’m not a local in that land.
Chris Davidson's poetry has appeared in Zyzzyva, Mockingbird, Cultural Weekly, Ekstasis, Zocalo Public Square, Alaska Quarterly Review, and many other publications, including the anthologies Why to These Rocks: 50 Years of Poems from the Community of Writers and Orange County: A Literary Field Guide. His chapbooks include Easy Meal (2020, Californios Press) and Poems (2012, Canvas Shop Press). He lives in Long Beach.