| Village at Noon by Donna J. G. Lee | ||
I look at the sun by mistake and it rolls like a fireball down the street, a burst of yellow. The street has been wiped clean, and no one walks except me. Onto its tongue I step and it pulls me into the square where men are stunned on tavérna chairs, their cigarettes charred, their stubbled faces red with the noon heat. When I reach the uvula, I peer into their throats, into the throat of the entire village. I smell the stale cigarettes, step aside the coffee stains, cough on ouzo fumes. I hear their dirty language and their stark remarks as the larynx rumbles. I want to know what lies in the stomach of a village but dare not leap, nor do I slow my pace because the entrance is disappearing and I need to turn to find a way out.
DONNA LEE
has poetry published or forthcoming in The Bitter Oleander; CALYX, A Journal of Art
and Literature by Women; The Cortland Review; Feminist Studies; Hurricane Alice; The
Midwest Quarterly; Phoebe: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Feminist Scholarship; Wisconsin
Review; and other journals. Donna is a freelance editor in New Jersey. |