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This poem is taken from PN Review 245, Volume 45 Number 3, January - February 2019.

Holiday with the Knudsens
'Holiday with the Knudsens' and other poems
Benjamin Nehammer
Of Where to Begin

A man offers you a dry red wine
directly from the bottle. You can
smell the knowledge on him.

You tend not to show your best
impressions to strangers. They may
prefer the fraudulent if

illustrious wave, the image as
surface, this glass stained yellow
to be passed and reflected

in sickly overcast. Knowing
the kind of food they serve here,
you turn down the brownish olive,

the crude rhubarb pie, that thing
you were certain held cilantro.
Then he comes back,

the waiter, leaving his tip
...


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