Warm Sake Does Not Agree with You

By LeAnne Hunt

In winter, I drink sake hot to heat my blood. All I see
clouds as from a sauna’s steam. The puffs I exhale
are dragon smoke, and I mythical. I chew cinnamon
until my mouth burns, but still I shiver. Sake wraps
around me like a shawl.

Pour until it spills over the masu onto a saucer. It is
my Fountain of Youth and warms the spring at my basin. I
forget, when it sings siren melodies in my blood, these
years of dry want, the cold hearth, the bare cupboards
and the wasteland of my bed. I twine a lock of midnight
around my finger and remember fire.