Selected Poems

Starbucks Table

Faisal Salahuddin
(May 3, 2009)


All the tables were
taken except for
the one for the handicapped
It is big and flat -
overlooks Nassau St.

I look at my asset pricing notes:
indifferent look at Indifference Pricing,
Good-Deal Bound Pricing.
Then comes Dynamic and Incomplete Hedging -
a must learn for every new bride
to deal with
her mother-in-law.

One Polish physics geek on my right
makes a nervous move
for holding the left hand of
a shy Kerala girl,
seemingly on their first date.

And the Australian grad student
turns his back facing the crowd
and shoves his face on
game theory equilibrium concepts.

I drink my $1.87 Izze drink
with the whiny Bob Dylan dropping
from the ceiling
barely hitting
my asset pricing notes
on the handicapped Starbucks table.


A little possibility
(May 9, 2009)

It's the simple possiblity that
I might bump into you
but not suddenly recognize
your now unfamiliar
smile
comforts me
in a twisted way.

This morning
that Princeton creek by Alexander road
had the possibility of becoming
the Ganges.

Yesterday afternoon
the voluptuous D&R Canal behind the Lake Carnegie
turned on by the spring fever
was groaning like the Nile.

Sorry. I am prone to exaggeration
when I see no possibility.

But wouldn't it be wonderful if
the creek turned into the Ganges?
And the canal into the Nile?

Possiblity is
the low-income country version of
hope.
An overused campaign promise.

We all need it sometime.
I need it now.

Let's suddenly bump into each other
in the crowd.