Backwind
Many can know something
yet the thing is not known for years.
Skillful we are at keeping it down.
Nine of the ten of us slap vodka into jelly jars
then up with club music and feet
all of ours poppity poppity on
apartment flooring.
Management phone-calls and the end,
so Mickie and I one-block-it to Union Square.
The uptown 6 for her and for me
a walk home in the late summer night
a-fragranted with burning Krishna.
Our connection? Friends with the host.
We sit top of the stairs for a smoke.
In Germany, Mickie and our host
tried t.v. editing. Our host won the job.
FYI he was skittish about sex
which is no criticism. I’m a prude and
rather nunish unless I’m not and on
those occasions, I am neither prudish
nor nunish. Mickie was receptionist.
Reading film scripts was the perk.
Back-of-the-neck creepy look
Mickie gave me. “Disgusting.”
She checked over her shoulder.
A skateboarder wearing his own skin
as cover for a perfectly thin chest.
A dusty Hari Krishna lit up as
Mickie warned, “Don’t tell anyone.”
In another month New York City
would be ashy, then recover
with nonstop memory. Mickie meant
Mr. Fatty Fat Fat, now bi-coastal in jail.
“Disgusting”? Not dramatic. Not even close.
We are all ashamed of something
and try not to comment on others
but everyone knows the professors,
the executives, the politicians.
Someone or everyone knows long before
anyone has the backwind to speak up.
—by Sarah Sarai.
Copyright © 2023, by Sarah Sarai. All Rights Reserved.
Sarah Sarai’s poems are in New Ohio Review, The Southampton Review, Big City Lit, Mom Egg, and other journals Her most recent collection is That Strapless Bra in Heaven (Kelsay Books). She lives in New York and is an independent editor of most anything with words.
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