Blake Lynch

Key West

I brought back stones from my night walks.
In the morning, Roseanna, who cleaned for us,
tucked them inside my suitcase whispering
Americano Perezoso.

Oh Roseanna Marquez, I spot her one night
sitting at a bar outside of Whitehead Street.
Dark as a tiki doll made of stone and mud.

I want to tell her that we have talked. We haven't.
I think the Atlantic Ocean at her door gave her shivers.

Her burnt bare feet clacked like quarters against the stool.
as she stood on phone books to reach the mirror.
She stuffed her bra full of socks and handkerchiefs
until her breasts become hills of blackberries.

So when the bartender says, beauty is tossing
its head everywhere tonight, I think of Roseanna
drinking Disguises 101 and waiting to walk
on these sunny streets dripping with flowers.

Three Birds

All evening, the black girls keep busy
with the fake hair laid out on the table like the remains of zebra
while I watch Elizabeth dance.

"Do you love her more than the moon? The rain?"
The girls ask as they wash and wrap.

I find the scar on the tall one’s shoulder
from the time she tried to fly from a moving car

as she braids the hair of the young mother
who makes a baby from bedsheets the night
the nurses take her to roost on the roof.

Besides them, an old blind woman cracks
nuts with her knuckles and waits for me
to read to her from an airline magazine.

This is how we spend our days in Western.
Waiting to fly, traveling shoes tied, counting
the number of birds that fly into the window.

Blake Lynch holds a degree in Dramatic Writing and English Literature from New York University. His poems have been published in journals such as Chelsea, The Fairfield Review, King Log, and The Oak Bend Review. His plays have been performed at The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and at Tisch School of the Arts in New York City. contact

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