After reading Barnaby Conrad’s book The Martini: An Illustrated History of an American Classic, and eagerly imbibing many myself over the years, I was inspired to write a poem about the one truly great American drink. 

The martini is charged with cultural significance, and, as a  true bullet to the brain, causes powerful physiological responses. In short, it is a magical potion. I wanted to express Conrad’s notion of the drink appealing to us in times of crisis—the Great Depression in the 1930s, the start of the Cold War in the 40s and 50s, and again today, for reasons of nostalgia (Mad Men! James Bond!) as well as basic weights of anxiety we have come again to inherit. The poem appears in the latest installment of Boston Poetry Union’s bold new online magazine Poetry Northeast, and again in the print annual at year’s end.

Below is a photograph of the single finest martini I have ever enjoyed, at the peerless Farmer’s Cabinet on Walnut Street in Philadelphia.  

1.

The ice is drenched in the silver cylinder
With Bluecoat, vermouth, juice of pickled peppers.

The splash tingles the cubes. They crack and fuse.
I rest it to chill, shake, then shower loose

A tidy rain to fill the glass chalice.
It glows like afternoon air on my lips.

2.

Solemn ceremony of president,
Executive, and, after all, the poet,

A clear, terrible fuel, rite of the WASP,
American legend, birthright, bequest:

Supreme distraction, long ago, for a time
Of polio, smallpox, economic decline;

Then back for the Cold War, to melt away
The edge on the Age of Anxiety

When the Atom Bomb made sobriety’s
Appeals pale beside a cold stem of Gilbey’s.

3.

We’re at one another’s throats now, night and day,
Yet still the true, indisputable way

To rinse cerebral soot is to simply say
“Dry, please, and a little dirty.” It’s okay

To soak there in the rich, swabbed ambience
After a day of cubicle fluorescence

And go a bit numb at nerve ends, a sense
Of drowning in place, serenely. So dispense

Wisdom and foolishness with a lemon twist
That shines like a hot coil above the wrist;

Or royal rust of a salt-defused mine,
The olive remote in its foggy brine.

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