Eye Catchers

 

My reflection in a window

shows me camera in hand,

shows me another woman,

the one I would rather be.

I snap three photos of myself

in that alternate universe,

standing in front of

a building reaching

for the sky, not scraping it.

 

On a side street

someone who loves antique cars

has parked an old-timer,

a Chevrolet Impala.

It has defied time,

refused to become scrap-metal

in a junk-yard.

It is making someone happy

with their hobby—one that

keeps an old treasure

shining and running.

We are reminded of another time,

decades past,

some guy,

some gal we knew,

their first car,

the mischief they got up to in it,

the places it took them to.

The memory plasters joy on faces.

 

And moving on,

a showcase window catches my eye.

Its display makes me pause—-

the gray skull of a cow

reminds me of cadavers,

relics of a killer drought,

death in a desert.

The skull sits in a gold tray,

surrounded by

silver forks, knives, spoons,

all sizes, well designed,

all polished and glistening.

Above it, a mirror, similarly adorned

reflects the scene,

a shrine to gleaming argent,

and, too, the different version of me.

And to think that this is

a window in a second-hand shop,

a place where former addicts

serve as salespeople,

that there is an artist

behind this captivating exhibit,

someone whose talent

may never be discovered,

someone who might never

be in the right place

at the right time.

But this could be the right place,

the right time.

 

 

 

 

Summer Dragons

 

 

They visit more often.

In summer, insatiable orange dragons

rage, devour all in their path.

We say goodbye to cremated neighbors,

neighborhoods, creatures and ancient trees.

In piling embers, we see reminders

of their existence and imagine their cries.

 

The dragons’ falling ash

snatches our breath away.

Fiery fangs turn the wind

into a sizzling, deadly force.

 

Those who flee into the sea

await a boiling ocean.

Do not pray for Neptune

to rescue us from Vulcan.

He, too, is angry,

will drown us in his tidal arms.

 

 

 

 

∞

Althea Romeo-Mark, a poet, writer and educator, was born in Antigua and grew up in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. She is the author of several full-length poetry collections, including The Nakedness of New and If Only the Dust Would Settle. She was awarded the Vincent Cooper Literary Prize to a Caribbean author for exemplary writing in Caribbean Nation Language, in 2023 by The Caribbean Writer, and the magazine’s Marguerite Cobb McKay Prize in 2009. A world citizen, she has lived and taught in the USA, Liberia, the UK, and, since 1991, Switzerland.