Yolanda-Calderon Horn
T.J.
He gave me to drink from his dented tin can.
It was surprisingly cool: not bad for tap water.
The living/kitchen area was vastly infertile-
with two lawn chairs posing as rainy-day furniture
and a gooseneck sink next to a circa 50's icebox.
The place
was clean.
One ill fitted window on a wall
faced a faded-yellow sheet that dangled
in place of a bedroom door.
He grabbed a towel, rinsed it;
with his hand quietly on my elbow,
he led me through the
managing curtain.
My trembling stopped.
A twin bed, stack of law books and
nightstand huddled in the center of the room.
There was lunch neatly tucked in a napkin on the table
along with the leather box monogrammed T.J.
That's where he kept the old letters.
I dared to ask how he came to save them
when everything else was lost.
I must have appeared as an apparition
that traveled from the past and arrived
in pulled smoke- whose accident outside
the front yard disturbed a valley silence.
He wiped drying blood from my forehead,
asked if I was hungry. Before I answered,
he tore the cheese sandwich in half.
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d | Yolanda-Calderon
Horn: Yoly wrote poems as a teen but shyness kept her from sharing her
stuff. She picked up writing again after moving from her native Chicago
to Florida in 1997. She's placed three times at the IBPC, taking first
place in Jun, 2005, second in Nov, 2005 and third in Jan,
2006. Her work has appeared in: Danjerasu and Whispers online zines.
Three of her poems appear in an anthology: The Best of Writers' Circle
2006. She is a moderator with two writer's workshop: Desert Moon Review
and The Versifier. You can read her recent interview at The Jeunesse Doree email: Yoly |
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