Listening to Piaf

A prince incommunicado mourns
a million uncensused falling leaves
while one sparrow sings their fall's flight
down dark, sighing from the depths
of a black bodice. A chill wind
passes through the walls. No matter
what you thought you wanted,
it belongs to the clogged
gutters.

Havana, 1956

Again this afternoon your father buys you
Coca Cola. It's cheap here, like two kinds
of bananas and a hotel room balcony over sun-
cut shadows, secrets behind wrought iron
patios, and alleyways giddy
with a history of piss. Muffled
dazzle of white walls, of palms
along the Prado and cobbles underfoot,
and overhanging extravagant red and
saffron flowers, people speaking mysteries
in their language, which is farther
beyond you than a ferry-ride of waves.

Everything's so cheap, and how
romantic with a balcony, your mother
tells a speechless daughter. And
who knows how long, she asks, before
we'll ever see this place again.

Miles of ocean to Miami - whoever
sees so far ahead?

We celebrate this day

because we can ignore toxic static
and strangers in helicopters whirring
out of sight and mind above the ozone.
We celebrate this day when anything could happen
on the news.
Oh, we've seen brimstone in the eyes
of upside-down kids on jungle gyms,
and grinning effigies in those pressurized collars
in the museum of horrors.
Today we celebrate by forgetting.
We celebrate the triteness of journals,
the prospect of another meal, a clutch job,
three little words and the occasional blue moon.
Today we haven't yet been diagnosed
with inoperable credit.

^

Biography

Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada of California. Her poetry appears in The Iowa Review, Free Lunch, Poetry International, Southern Humanities Review and elsewhere. Her latest collection is An Hour in the Cougar's Grace (Pudding House, 2000). She was previously published in EA8 and EA 9