Asiago Cheese

Refrigerated deli cold-cuts almost gone:
one oblong butter-colored sheet
of Asiago cheese – I bite off small
precise cool crescents from this final slice:

a moment after in the nose and upper palate
I perceive a tiny funk: which makes
me think of Europe –
food that tastes of where it comes from:

culinary expertise that leaps towards the heart
and touches, sniffs it – pricks it fresh –
sees and keeps the human
in its art: the animal, the sweat, the flesh.

New York has this in her left hand
but her right and both her feet
and various appurtenances she deploys
throughout each street and avenue

pursue a different sort of aim: here the soul
is galvanized, becomes a part
of New York’s gleaming name:
you can find the subtle stink of truffle but alone

it is too muffled for the teeming likes of her:
she likes the body but prefers
her canyons of the air, despair and glare.
No Europe, really, there.

.