Tonight's Poet Corner: Sitting On The Curb

Sitting On The Curb
by Belinda Roddie

Van's getting desperate for a pack
of smokes, and I'm itching
for a tall, frosty drink. We're chewing
fog and spitting out rain outside the liquor
store. We only have three nickels and
a couple of bad scratch tickets to spare.

Nearby, the ribbon of cars scraping
out of downtown has been reduced to a
frayed thread. One bicyclist screams
at a driver who dared honk his horn at
her. She's not wearing a helmet. Van
scoffs at that. "She's gonna hit a fire hydrant
and get brain damage as soon as she slams
into the pavement." Sometimes, Van gets
imaginatively specific.

We see a friend shuffle by, and she's got
both cigarettes and a lighter. The cold
is masked by the smell of tobacco and the
taste of ash and dusty paper. Across the street,
a young boy cries because his mom didn't let
him go into the toy store. It's dark out, and I
can barely see beyond the street into the hills
where lights flicker off, one by one, like dying
embers on a blackened horizon.