*Katie on the Corner

*Here is one of the five that were published this week in The Awakenings Review, Volume 10, Number 1. This is one never seen here.

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I’ll call you Katie,

Katie sounds Irish, happy, a fine fit

for your dazzling green eyes, pale skin, and

red wayward hair, matching red

mouth that smiles up at me from

my morning paper.

I never expected you would be big news. A stick,

reed thin, dropped into a creek (or thrown?)

washed by the current, clipped edges

from rocks, no reprieve from eddies,

a constant rush downstream, always down,

never up,

never

up.

Baloney sandwich on cheap white bread,

mayo, no cheese, tomatoes like flat red

rubber mats with seeds.

Piccadilly Square dreams in daylight,

feigning foreign accents, and likes, at night,

at times simply jumbling sounds into

a private language,

understood by the humped sidewalk,

beats of drumming feet, and the same third step

of the house by the road out in front

sitting, watching a red

Chevrolet Malibu, headlights hungry,

rolling slowly past.

Feral cats in black and white, ducking,

dodging, then utterly composed

beneath the silver Hyundai,

paint faded and peeled.

Quite contrary Mary, (I’ll call you Katie),

you’re feral, too,

watching, watching, back and forth,

waiting, whiling, wasting, willing until

that late late night, 3:00 a.m. at 12^th and St. Louis,

when right there on the corner sidewalk,

someone fired that bullet into your head.