Night in Jamaica

 

My love disappears

around a corner of yellow

streetlamp.

 

Engaged with his phone,

someone speaks as he walks

into the night and his native streets.

 

Nothing but dogs and radios

through everyone’s iron-barred windows.

 

I want to run and follow, but won’t.

I sit on the concrete, my bare legs

mosquito bitten.

 

In a dip of quiet,

a man’s voice rises.

A woman’s voice rises back.

 

The dogs begin again.

 

A constant wind from the mountain

combs over my worry

 

but my love returns quick,

offers his hand to lift

my body and the moon it carries.

 

Then he looks to sky, away.

 

Already from the window

someone is calling his name.

 
 
 
 

Natalie Solmer has a BS in horticulture (with a minor in poetry!) from Clemson University, and has been working as a florist for twelve years. She earned her MFA in poetry from Butler University and is also an adjunct English instructor at Ivy Tech Community College. She lives a mile from the famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway with her two young sons. She has been published in Dunes Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Punchnel’s, The Louisville Review, Mothers Always Write, and forthcoming in Willow Springs.