Of Artists, Car Bombs, Scars
I could open the tome about Frida Kahlo Diego Rivera Trotsky André Breton in Mexico, then Paris the affairs, the egos, the art. I’d have pearls of anecdotes to recount at witty dinner parties where this kind of thing is expected and will likely lead to another invitation.
Or I could open the last LeCarré that burns my hands to the touch with its sense of foreboding and knowledge that literally everyone in the novel has nicotine-stained fingers and some tawdry backstory of duplicity likely involving selling state secrets and will smoke themselves to death or be killed in a car bomb on a rainy British lane.
But what I’d like to do instead is trace the scar above your lip with one quiet finger from where a dog almost tore it off when you were a child as you rest your hand on my thigh we sip our old fashioneds and set sail into the evening.
Leaving Arroyo Seco
Sated with red chile and steak cabernet and laughter the darkness shocks a cloak of black Two lane highways trucks going eighty careen towards us
their lights flash crosses on the side of the road mark earlier loss
Entering Taos I unclench my fist breathe out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding the full moon riding the ridge of the Sangre de Cristo mountains
Suddenly there are four of them galloping alongside of us trying to dash in front manes flashing haunches gleaming you open my window to let me hear their hooves a wild clop next to me
I scream Was it for joy to see something so free at least for that moment
Susan Notar is a poet living in Northern, Virginia. Her work has appeared in a number of publications including Penumbra, Joys of the Table: an Anthology of Culinary Verse, and Written in Arlington: Poems of Arlington, Virginia. She works at the U.S. State Department on the Middle East. She has one tall and delightful son.