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In a Little Café

by Joy Leftow


All your needs fulfilled below the elevated train
El Camino for auto supplies
El Mirador serves wine and beer y comida Latina
but no bagels or knishes, my favorite dishes.
So many things to see;
Wish there was no anarchy,
Wish I could be free.
I’m not as free as a tree.

I want to be as free as a summer breeze,
Blowing continuously at ninety degrees
Like the summer rain that cools the ground
and mists around like rain-formed rainbows.
I want to be the rainbows in my mind.
Wounded to the core
My to-do list keeps growing exponentially.

I’m in time for round fourteen hundred forty-four more
On the Southern sea shore island in my mind.
I’m there in a flash of fatality,
The infidelity, the totality of a unity,
I sense danger lurking. I stay steady working,
I languor leisurely in my laziness until
A licentious mood leads me to lavish lust
From dawn to dust.

I play the game of life
Continuously: readjust, recently
Read about my poetic genius,
Don’t give me the bum’s rush.
That sounds so cool,
I just don’t understand it.
Race and religion cause despondence and glee
Like a glacier rotting away,
I sit here eating my cappuccino fudge sundae.
How do they keep that fudge so soft?
Ice cream talking disaster.

My world degenerates while faster rhythms
Set my thoughts flowing like lava, rain drenches
Meeting a ceremonial master in the Arabian Desert.
My city rain meets recalcitrant, refusing concrete

Brings the word to the street,
A super salivary sweet treat.
What do you think? Here, found the link,
It’s sink or sing, a tune in head,
An ocean of sound all around, lost and found.
I keep trying to heal the wounds,
But they’re cut too deep.
My words turn to blood
And ooze through holy ground.


Copyright © 2013 by Joy Leftow

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