The Rabbit and Snake Cocktail

             When the Rabbit meets the Snake, there is true happiness. – Chinese proverb
 
 
According to the Chinese zodiac, Rabbit and Snake
walk into a bar, and it’s love at first sight,
the “Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world,
she walks into mine” moment. It’s their true happiness
falling in love in beautiful places: entering the void
in Japanese love hotels, grinding against each other
during the last dance at a gay club, exchanging more
than words in the backseat of a cab while the driver
averts his eyes, reminding himself it’ll be only ten
more minutes until they’ve reached their destination.
Rabbit wants to take Snake to Prague, where they fall
asleep on the other side of the world.
It’s as the Surrealists say, “I can only be wild
with one person,” until Snake and Rabbit with their fire
fight during the movie previews, sitting in sullen
silence once the film starts, and she starts sobbing
until he puts his hand on her knee,
looks at her with the understanding I’m Sorry,
until Snake and Rabbit with their fire
fight when the waitress at the Sichuan restaurant
brings their Kung Pao chicken and spicy scallops,
and the waitress apologizes, thinking she
caused the fight when in actuality, Snake and Rabbit
were fighting over some Russian play
about rhinos sitting in a café.
 

Dorothy Chan was a 2014 finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Blackbird, Plume, Spillway, and The Great American Poetry Show.