Firmat’s Last Theorem
POETRY
by Gustavo Pérez Firmat
All this will end. Saturday morning,
lavish highlight of our week. Pioneers
of the usual, we make the rounds.
First stop: Whole Foods for fruit,
salmon steaks for that night’s dinner
and a sweet treat. I chat in Spanish
with Ciro, the Mexican fishmonger.
Then it’s five miles to the ABC store.
Mary Anne sits in the car quizzing
her phone while I wander up and down
the whiskey aisle, unable to decide
which of the single malts to sip later.
By the time I’m wedged behind the wheel,
it’s past noon already. But the highlight’s
secret glow, the pearl within the pearl,
beckons: a walk-in flower shop
by the old barbecue stand. Mary Anne
picks out lily stems. Hands in pockets,
I shuffle and sniff. Driving home,
we’re happy. All this will end one day.
Gustavo Pérez Firmat’s writing has been published in The Paris Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, and other journals. He has published several books of poetry in Spanish and English, among them Sin lengua, deslenguado and Bilingual Blues. Pérez Firmat’s books of cultural criticism include Life on the Hyphen and Tongue Ties. His most recent book is My Favorite Monster, a volume of translations of the poems of Spanish poet Luis Alberto de Cuenca, published by Lavender Ink in 2024. Pérez Firmat is the David Feinson Professor Emeritus of Humanities at Columbia University.
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