Craig Blais
Uncommon Parts

Our lives happen between the memorable.
—Jack Gilbert

Despite the countless hours in front of the television, or reading silently side-by-side,
We remember past loves mainly by their most tender and most insensitive acts.
The first spring of the millennium, we remember as the smell of oil paint and the quality
            of light
Pouring into a girlfriend’s bedroom on the corner of Haight-Ashbury,
Lying naked in bed — while tourists turned in circles below like jewelry box ballerinas
With disposable cameras in hand —
And how she’d rise occasionally to stand nude in that daylight, and spritz a common
           housefly with water
Then gently place it on the outside windowsill to dry.
Later, we weave through the crowd on the wharf to meet her parents for dinner
And, as a ring of twelve cocktail shrimp
Is placed on the white linen, they begin a critique
Of Russian immigrants that endures the last of the wine glasses emptying.
Sea lions on the floating docks below bark incessantly, filling the air with the stench
            of salt and shit.