So you moved here from Chicago
to experience whatever
a New England boiled dinner means.
Now on Valentine's Day
we're forced to share a business meal,
so you order that famous dinner
of exquisitely rounded vowels.

Frankly I'm embarrassed to sit
in this restaurant of moony couples
with someone who isn't my spouse,
especially since you're much younger
and feature suicidal hair
tainted the drab of iron ore
and hung like a shower curtain.

Most of the men in the room have eased
their tender gaze across your face,
which bears a certain eloquence
without the usual threat. Too bad
that compost of a hairdo frames it.
The candidate we're committed
to interview is late. Fate decrees

that he arrive when we're slightly drunk
and giggly, pleased by mutually
cruel little humors. The test
is your New England boiled dinner,
which we agree resembles the man
we haven't met. But here he is,
shedding his coat. We glance at

the dinner, at his pasty grin,
and laugh and laugh until he laughs too,
though inconsolable because
he knows he'll never get the job.
Now we're calm and friendly enough
and the dinner proceeds with questions
about experience and research,

and your hair begins to sparkle
with tiny snake-heads baring
their fangs in the low romantic light
this steamy Valentine's Day Sunday,
and your boiled dinner looks up at you,
swimming in juices and brimming
with sociopathic lust.