Tonight's Poet Corner: Market, One PM

Market, One PM
by Belinda Roddie

In the café, she holds the notebooks
out to me in trembling, wrinkled
hands, like she's sealed her soul away
in aged parchment and ancient ink.

She tells me that this "manuscript"
of hers has been sitting in her home
for about twenty years, and she would like
to have me type it up. No edits. Apologies
for the sloppy penmanship.

My nose catches the background noise
of tiny cups of espresso in front
of laptops, that sharp bitter aroma lingering
alongside the burning plastic odor of
an overheated chip of silicon buried

in a motherboard trying desperately
to contact cyber space. Above our heads,

there could be God or aliens, but
no matter what, our brains are constructed
from frayed wires and dying batteries,
and soon, ultimately, whatever we write
will be burned by an

ever swelling sun and we will yearn
for immortality in the dry trenches
left behind by the oceans that have
boiled away.