Waffen und Sachertorte aus Wien, 1986
By Ernest Troth
The Baby Browning wiggles and slips the linen fold,
Launching from that jacket he’d meant to fix,
Skittering across the marble café floor,
a .25 caliber beetle of blued steel buzzes
between bentwood chairs and strangers’ boots.
Porcelain cups pause mid-sip,
the froth of melange trembling.
Freeze-frame replay catches the action:
forks hung above Sachertorte, a pistol poised in tapdance,
eyes following the gun’s playful escape.
A young diplomat, pale with fear and a smile too thin,
stoops too late for his weapon, now taunting from the corner.
Already, whispers stir like steam,
The orchestra plays on but the tune has shifted,
Vienna has seen such things before:
entschuldigen Sie, bitte, ist das Ihres?
A first date has turned awkwardly silent.
Ernest Troth is a graduate of the University of Chicago, a former US diplomat, and now a distiller of whiskies and gins. A life-long fan of John Donne, he often writes about the intersection of food and spirits with a garnish of foreign spice. He has been published in Beyond Words (Berlin) and highly commended by the Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Competition (Cork, Ireland).
