The day I was born, lived and died in a car
we sang songs of a rusted earth
though the radio insisted a moodier hum
A marigold sky melted the sun, so
the moon drew forth like a sword.
We gazed out our windows
driving to find the place where the trees
play cat’s cradle.
We were drinking as we drove
deciphering the aftermath of the blues.
while a sky of ripped fabric disguised that same moon
as one half. after the blues, and I thought –
an aperture, or a brazen yellow light
or a corner corroded and cobwebbed.
I’d already clamored to gin and st. germain
hitting the bar the brakes
our backs against bathroom walls.
I wanted out and not to listen about the beauty of Munich
– I’d be damned by bottles and sleep before that city ever saw me.
I inhaled the breath of standing patrons,
the refuse falling from fifteen surrounding mouths.
We pulled into a second jukebox dive
the sky now sewn back with hasty patching.
Hum drum of the radio and the freedom of skirts
blessing the ankles, then the knees then thighs
I thought about Munich, not as a city of monks
just a city I’d never see. A city you asked me to visit.
All glasses clink
to alpine structures and I keep quiet
while the good is toasted.
then the blues came wailing back
as if this was all there was, no little death
or afterlife.
At work the next day, I ask
the pregnant girl how she’s doing.
“So far so good,” she says and laughs
like the good is bound to end
before she knows it.
Silvana Alfonso is a writer and moonlighter from New Jersey. She has been published in Rivercraft, The Susquehanna Review and Jackson Hole Review.
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