I found this poem in The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry and I like this piece very much.

The Promise~ Sharon Olds

With the second drink, at the restaurant,
holding hands on the bare table,
we are at it again, renewing our promise
to kill each other. You are drinking gin,
night-blue juniper berry
dissolving in your body, I am drinking Fume,
chewing its fragrant dirt and smoke, we are
taking on earth, we are part soil already,
and wherever we are, we are also in our
bed, fitted, naked,closely
along eachother, half passed out,
after love, drifting back
and forth across the border of consciousness,
our bodies buoyant, clasped. Your hand
tightens on the table. You're a little afraid
I'll chicken out. What you do not want
is to lie in a hospital bed for a year
after a stroke, without being able
to think or die, you do not want
to be tied to a chair like your prim grandmother,
cursing. The room is dim around us,
ivory globes, pink curtains
bound at the waist-and outside
a weightless, luminous, lifted-up
summer twilight. I tell you you do not
know me if you think I will not
kill you. Think how we have floated together
eye to eye, nipple to nipple,
sex to sex, the halves of a creature
drifting up to the lip of matter
and over it-you know me from the bright,blood-
flecked delivery room, if a lion
had you in its jaws I would attack it, if the ropes
binding your soul are your own wrists, I will cut them.



This poem is very interesting to me. The setting of the piece follows along with setting as an action. The setting is in the background to the characters in this piece, but does peek out in the poem quite a bit.I my opinion it starts out in a sort of bar ,club kind of place. Then it switches to a bedroom, back to the bar( lines14-15), and then a slight turn to a hospital(line31-32). The poem itself is mysterious to me. While I was reading it over and over i felt like there was almost a secret message like a symbolism that was hidden inbetween its lines. Not really sure so if anyone has any thought I would love to hear them. I do really like the poem because to me it is intriguing.