by Lisa Eve Cheby

Puerto Sagua, Collins Drive, South Beach Miami

A magnet protrudes from the register’s side,
a metal clip an earring dangling the day’s receipts
extolling the steps walked, the cups of coffee poured.

An all-American dinner of black beans, yucca frit con mojo, and café con leche,
bills pass from sandy sunburned hands to calloused palms
to a register as old as memories of Cuba,

of streamline aluminum and rounded keys like the curves and portholes
of the Ocean Drive hotels, stationary steamships yearning o sail,
weighted down by the thick, black iron of the cash drawer.

Blink

Though the sheer eggshell curtain I see
hazy outlines of honeysuckle blossoms, white-pink
smudges, a watercolor left in the rain. A breeze displaces
the panel revealing the flowers’ beauty banging against the screen
asking to be saved from the brooding sky behind;
clouds promise pelting daggers of water—not gentle
refreshing rain—rain that drowns earth and roots,
rain that weighs and breaks.

The wind pauses, the honesuckle retreats to stillness,
ready to stand its ground. The curtain resets the illusion,
like the time my blink was a breeze that displaced
your mask for a moment
revealing you.

Lisa Eve Cheby’s poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in various journals including The Rumpus, Tidal Basin Review, A cappella Zoo, TAB, Entropy, and Role/Reboot. Lisa’s poems are also found in the anthologies Drawn to Marvel, The Burden of Light, Coiled Serpent, and Full. Her first book, Love Lessons from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is available from Dancing Girl Press and was featured in The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed Series. She was a 2017 Writer in Residence at SAFTA’s Firefly Farms Residency. Lisa has an MFA from Antioch and an MLIS from SJSU. http://lisacheby.wordpress.com