Tonight's Poet Corner: The Witnesses

The Witnesses
by Belinda Roddie

Two women with short hair tucked
under baseball caps and jackets draping
over their shoulders like winter cloaks
share a cheap cigar by the fire hydrant
in front of a dilapidated liquor store. Their

cheeks are pink from the June gloom chill,
and their hands are yellow from calluses
that have swelled up like barnacles on a
sea of weathered skin after years of using
a hammer and power drill on new houses built
in the bowels of the small Western town.

The crackling of the burning paper is
a perfect symphonic accompaniment to
the sweet, sweet smell of the tobacco,
aged like a jazz song on a tenor saxophone
in a smoke-choked bar only a mile's walk
away. Deeply, they inhale the shadows of

nicotine-creased ballerinas swiveling
across their imaginary island stages, wood
and sand blending in polished mosaics beneath
their cramping toes. A dance of ash and dust
before an out-of-nowhere runaway sedan folds
into the hydrant like a slinky, springing

back into shape as the water comes shooting
out like the spray of a Maxim gun, and the ladies
laugh and laugh and laugh until they cough
and drop the stogie onto the pavement and stagger
back, arm in arm.