Scroll Verse
Trader Joe by Mike Stutzman
July 20, 2012
(Flickr)
Any port with a brothel
was home for a night. In Palermo
you fought with razors
over the price of figs.
A rice lord offered
his dark-eyed daughter
and half of Irian Jaya
for your silence. Dreams
dragged you back, dreams
of lines to stand
in other lines, of arms
strained with canvas totes.
An impossibly busy life
has you on her lips. Your name
fills homes.
Mike Stutzman is a writer and medical educator living in Connecticut. His work has appeared in The Chattahoochee Review and (pseudonymously) The Miami Herald.
