They were arguing

when the pear and lemon

rolled off the porcelain plate

with the windmill and stone bridge

bumped on a planter

then slid to the floor.

If he had not seen it,

he would have accused her of making it up.

 

Carol V. Davis is the author of Between Storms (Truman State University Press, 2012). She won the 2007 T.S. Eliot Prize for Into the Arms of Pushkin: Poems of St. Petersburg. Twice a Fulbright scholar in Russia, her poetry has been read on NPR, Radio Russia, and at the Library of Congress. She teaches at Santa Monica College and Antioch University, Los Angeles. She is a poetry editor of the Los Angeles newspaper, the Jewish Journal.