Mint-garnished tumblers sweat
into our palms, and the quinine prickle of gin and tonic
cuts the thick waft of magnolia petals threaded
through a copper and steel twilight. Tires
slap the road, and the velvet-gravel voice
that floods Bourbon Street can’t be Louis Armstrong.
Mother said she met him in the ’50s, but then,
she said so many things. Smoke bruises my cheek,
and I can see the girl’s face in her cigarette’s
ember, young and too nonchalant for the night.
Laura K. McRae is a teacher in Toronto, Ontario, where she lives and writes. Her poems have appeared in numerous Canadian and US journals, including The Antigonish Review, Contemporary Verse 2, and Tar River Poetry.
Clementine Poetry Journal 