Lady with a margarita,
legs crossed,
dressed in flowers
waits in vain.
Her hair cascades
from a slim barrette,
her smoke dancing
to the ache of a minor key.
Another freight train
thunders past, another
glass, a cigarette
twisting in its tray.
She’s fashioned herself
a tree from splinters,
a twig where tenor sax
takes flight. Lady
with a margarita,
vitality and pain,
inflorescence on the night,
fabricating spring.
Carol L. Deering has lived in Wyoming for 30+ years. She has twice received the Wyoming Arts Council Poetry Fellowship (2016, judge Rebecca Foust; 1999, judge Agha Shahid Ali). Her poetry appears in online and traditional journals, recently in Written River and forthcoming in Soundings Review.
