Coffee and Sachertorte

Do not write in words sea-sick
on a postcard but paint me
with a damp brush on a warm canvas,
like all your other women.
I sit here in this Viennese café
drinking bitter coffee, sweetened
with bites of Sachertorte,
enveloped in the pungent smoke of cigars,
reading postcards from Klimt,
and all I can think of are poplars,
beech forests and lakes.
You hide from boisterous café society
behind complex walls of colour
splashed with gold,
and yet you court the rich
and frivolous, who sate the erotic
depths of your mind: water nymphs
who watch a condemned man
drowning in a sea monster’s embrace.

Kim M. Russell, 31^st March 2026

It’s come around so quickly, it’s already Na/GloPoWriMo Eve, and we have an early-bird prompt: we should start by reading Katie Naughton’s poem, ‘Debt Ritual: Oysters’, and then write poems in which we refer to a specific writer or artist (or work of literature/art) and make a declarative statement about want or desire. We should set the poem in a particular, people-filled place, like a restaurant, bus station, museum, school, etc.