Poetry – Issue 5 | June 2009
Continued
by Laurie Byro
This port is hard on sailors,
hard on beggars who don’t speak
French. When my sleeping bag
begins to crawl, we land at a clinic—
imitating sidewinders, snakes that lie
to women in deserts, cheap
souvenirs from a forgotten life.
I am ashamed and crying.
He is patient, long and slow
as the river murmuring outside.
His eyes are sherry brown, almost liquid.
We are almost liquid as we sit cross-legged,
his eyes warming me through
second hand tights.
He hands me a cup with a broken handle,
filled with tea from an island of spice.
He reads my fortune, peers into the mug.
He thinks I am crazy, he thinks
his love will save me. The tea leaves
don’t listen to his confidences.
He makes me drain a second, this time
with a clean mug. He takes my hands
instead, won’t reveal a better future.
I collect shells and feathers, cast-offs,
treasures. We talk about words
before we know the meaning of the song.
The part about Jesus always confuses—
drowning people, the blind men and sailors,
leaving these ports lonelier still.
I will leave him behind. I will come back
different. With gifts, exotic offerings.
Nesting dolls, a smuggled turtle, bergamot and oils.
He will wait for me, turn me into this.
Snow in his eyelashes when he kisses me goodbye.
We will warm each other through.
We will tell each other stories, make our fortunes with these lies.
I will peer into porcelain and directly in his eyes.
About the author
Laurie Byro’s short stories and poetry draw on myth, fairytale and her experiences of foreign places in the years she worked as a travel agent. Published widely in literary journals such as Autumn Sky Poetry, Loch Raven Review, and Stirring, her work has been featured on The Guardian’s online workshop and has placed favorably in the Interboard Poetry Competitions. Laurie is head of circulation at a library in New Jersey where she facilitates a poetry circle.
Read our current issue, Issue 5 | June 2009:
Poetry
Berlin by Sy Margaret Baldwin
Two Poems by Sean Edgley
After Your Funeral I Set Out to Find You in Different Time Zones by Jennifer Faylor
Painter by Ricky Garni
Other Than by Dana Guthrie Martin
Two poems by Timothy Kercher
Five Views of Guanajuato: A Mythology by Athena Kildegaard
Two poems by Mary Kovaleski Byrnes
Goya by Trent Nutting
The Changing of the Flowers by Jennifer Saunders
Two poems by Ken Turner
Postcard prose
Buttons by Jennifer Faylor
The Enemy Tree by Kirby Wright
Escape on the Canal by Addie Zierman
