Lunch Hour
Stephanie Jones
Do you want to see them?
Sure.
This is Ri. That’s from last month.
once twice threes denim over spilled indigo pooling.
What is he doing?
I think he’s gambling with the wind.
He doesn’t take much in stride, does he?
sallow-fisted underneath a sweating september umbrella.
No. I had to learn to do that. This is Ze.
roundoff scatter. grab pine needles, tilt into the setting sun.
She looks like you.
tender hands scarred. flashlight desolate stomach. shadows on the waking wall.
I know. Everyone says she does. “She’s a W— for sure.”
Is that in New Jersey?
Delaware actually. My mother sent one of her paper airplanes so we
met her that weekend.
doorstep knocking pushed over again. flattened. drawn into years from the garden.
They’re good travelers.
They’ve been around places. They don’t mind the car. On flights
they sleep or sound like the end-roll of an old
film projector.
rainforest spout watering can. soft intrusions. green sickened at the edge
of settled leaking.
They’re younger here.
That was last year. Maybe 18 months ago. We took them to the water
park in Pennsylvania.
burnt offerings fallout rain ashing. window into window & scratching at
fiberglass with a toothpick.
Is that the closest one?
underground temples visible to those who wander.
It’s the one I remembered. Did you grow up in the city?
when the mind had its first ice age, scrounge for crystals
of familiar.
I’ve lived here for 13 years. So do my parents — they live
12 blocks away, but they’ve been here for
almost 20. Years I mean.
leap into new orbit. echo at goldening women canning smiles.
I would like to see you again.
a leaf pressed into the sun. hold. sink. blink. gone.
I think we should. See each other again.
ghosts of carrier pigeons. empty claws at the bottom of a long ocean
somehow breathing.
Stephanie Jones
Stephanie Jones is a New York writer & poet with bylines in The New York Times, DownBeat, NPR: Music, JazzTimes and The Detroit Free Press. Her poems appear in New Reader Magazine, Poetic Sun, 50-Word Stories & Stone Poetry Quarterly, and as a commission for Blue Note Records.