Jacaranda en la Tarde

Violet petals of paper-cup flowers
drop, a soft tap, on the courtyard tile
where your cat stretches, languidly,

gazing at us in white sunlight
from mottled shade on smooth porcelain,
the grid of a cool, anonymous calendar.

Mexico City, circa circus.
Your shoes clip brisk across the patio.
The cat shudders, seeking sleep.

Gone as afternoon clouds gather over
four lips in public lust, a sharp taunt,
Frida’s pipe through my abdomen.

Shoving toward the train door,
do they remember the lurching tectonics
that swayed skyscrapers and buried babies?

In Plaza Santo Domingo they transcribe
words you did not write me.
Men on balconies yell as you could have.

Your heel in retreat crushed velvet corolla,
loud enough for twenty-one million to hear,
and sent your cat shooting into the shadows.

Lindsey Clark’s writing has been published in magazines such as Thin Air, Newfound, and The Shanghai Literary Review, as well as the African anthology Memories of Sun. Her piece published by Defunkt Magazine has been selected for the printed anthology they will publish this summer. She is also the author of a travel memoir, Land of Dark and Sun.