poem of the day 08.30.10

our hobby

sitting in a living room
in buffalo, new york

my sister-in-law and her husband
putting their daughter to bed

my wife and i
are plowing through a bottle of their malbec
looking at pictures of our niece
on the digital camera that wants to die

we have pictures of the cats
on here, my wife says
dozens of them

she shows me a picture
of one of the cats hiding behind a bookcase
and another of the cat
sleeping in a box we still haven’t thrown away

i remember taking those, i say
we took those pictures weeks ago
we must’ve been drinking that night

my wife takes the camera back
begins deleting the pictures of the cats
some of me making drunken faces
the few remaining ones we had on there
from our april trip to paris

we drink every night, she says
in between the faint beeps of deleted pictures

i nod
say nothing

hope that when we’re done with the malbec
the in-laws won’t mind us
going to town on that bottle of pinot noir
waiting there on the kitchen table