At His Sister’s Wedding
In a sea of high heels and biker boots scraping the dance floor, he spots me. My sandals
feel suddenly strappy. The corners of his eyes pinch into laugh lines. My hug launches
two seconds too soon. Sneaky tears eek through my pinhole ducts.
Christ. Stop that.
I knew he would look for me and all those years we’ve tucked neatly into private
keepsakes. Too much to admit. Like how I’ve missed his silence, I wished I’d written.
How when, twenty years ago, he asked me if I loved him and I said “No, not like that.”
Terror-talking.
In This Town
Because the streets
climb steeply,
end abruptly,
throw sharp curves
at newcomers,
I find myself
thinking of love.
The hills take liberties
with cars risking the plunge
down them. Halfway
up a narrow rue
I am halted by the honk
of an attractive Peugeot.
There’s little room
to negotiate the jam,
yet I somehow
maneuver around him.
All the street signs
indicate how to leave,
but petunias and clover
sweeten the air and there
are just enough
bumps in the road.
My Mother Kept Kleenexes in Her Purse
On the kitchen windowsill. She put a box in the bathroom. Two and three wadded up in her bowling bag, coat and jacket pockets. Peeking out of her bra. Tucked into cuffs. Wrapped ‘round baby teeth under Tooth Fairy pillows.
Sunday morning, late for mass, we girls scrambled into the Dodge Dart, forgetting head coverings and mother reached under the driver’s seat and like a collection plate, passed the tissue box and bobby pins to us, backed the car out, angled the rearview and blotted her lipstick, Bugle Call Red.
Originally from the Jersey Shore, Susan McDonough-Hintz currently lives on the edge of a farm in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, with her wife, Roxane, and four rescued cats. When she isn’t testing websites in development for the Massachusetts Medical Society, she likes to listen to people’s stories. Her poems have been published in The Camel Saloon, Gemini, Message In A Bottle, Fortunates, and elsewhere. She has work forthcoming in Adanna and Raleigh Review. She often wakes to the howls of coyotes ‘round midnight and doesn’t mind them at all.
–Art by Sagi Kortler