Angelo Moriondo: Espresso Man
Not a bean, nor a blend, nor a roasting
level, but a viscosity like that of warm honey
conjured by steamy ritual and your sparked
genius made manifest in machine.
Three years before Eiffel threw up his tower,
your monument to brewing took
a measly bronze in the Expo of Turin.
Oh, if they could have foreseen
you’d pave the bean strewn road
for Starbucks and such giants as George
Clooney, peddling plastic pods of your magic.
Now, you and a teenage YouTuber
are the only famous Moriondos.
When you purchased, Angelo,
the American Bar in the Galleria Nazionale
of Via Roma, was your frothing
vision already swathing west?
Could you imagine me here, brownstruck
in Madrid, my third shot of café solo
down or dreaming of a demitasse
on its tiny platter on a muggy Magazine
Street terrace, my soul dark and grainier
than the Mississippi
my veins a race track
my head enlightened but mudcoursed
stickier than your hot ambrosia?
For you who perfected my drug of choice
I ought return the favor. At least in name
I should not leave you rest.
In the faded black and white I pull up
of you on Google, your piercing eyes yet beam
above the dark circles that frame them.
You were tireless, you were bold.
You, like me, Angelo, could have used some sleep.
• • •
LC Gutierrez is a product of many places in the Southern USA and the Caribbean. An erstwhile academic, he now writes, teaches and plays trombone in Madrid, Spain. His work is most recently published or forthcoming in Sugar House Review, New York Quarterly, Ballast Journal, Arkansas Review, Rogue Agent, Stone Circle Review, and Tampa Review. He is a poetry reader for West Trade Review.