Tobi Alfier

Half-Mast

Her backstory is all shame
depending on who you ask.
Her intentions, even now,
remain in the dark.

Music punctures the air,
the FM station sometimes
Country-Western, sometimes
rock and roll, sometimes Spanish,

she hits the highway—
top down, Isadora Duncan scarf
tying back long red hair,
sunglasses hiding her eyes.

Her hopes have worn themselves sheer
and she’s too tired for anyone to guess,
eyes alert, smile seemingly sincere
she’d shimmied to the ground

and back up one last time,
threw a hip toward the stranger
with a handful of fives
one last time. The song on replay

in her head said
the next road you take best
be the one gone and she’s
taking her own advice,

shuffling her life around
all she might possibly lose
—which is nothing. The weightless
speech of hearsay, it destroys.

A bird slides the wind
in a flawless darkening sky,
a ragtime sax calls from an open door—
her nightfall’s port-of-call. She turns in.

.

Tobi Alfier’s credits include Arkansas Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Cholla Needles, Gargoyle, James Dickey Review, KGB Bar Lit Mag, Louisiana Literature, Permafrost, Washington Square Review, and War, Literature and the Arts.  She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.bluehorsepress.com).

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