Waiting for Leonora Carrington at Cafe Alma Negra
"Storm Brewing Over the City" painting by Nuala McEvoy
by Laurel Benjamin
wouldn’t order for you because I don’t know your coffee tastes,
but this place has a steel reputation. I heard rumors
about your cloistered ways, how you’ve grabbed a sack and thrown it
dripping on the threshold, creature with fangs and octopus eyes
birthed. Frankly, all I could imagine,
dark roast, though the art photos
plastered on the walls don’t jive with your paintings,
especially the mohawk woman. I expected
your small flames to fan at the table
on time, but I’ve brought a notebook, brought forgiveness
to your smears of gold eagles, stoic edifice despite two convent schools
expelling you. My tea bag on the saucer has started to dry,
but no worries—I’m becoming an ecstatic
in my mind, picture your lace-deep sockets,
swoosh of dark cotton hair. My first time in Mexico City,
hoping you’ll escort me to statues frothed
out of bronze, or invite me to a night sky party, where you’ll trace
with your arm to illuminate tiny musical instruments the rest of us can’t see,
spider-woven. I’m hoping you’ll let me into the secret society
as an initiate with out floating
my own secrets, though if I must, whisper in your ear
the seriousness of love and how I don’t know if I’ll ever smear
against anyone again, or how I left temp jobs
at lunch, never to return. Still, I wore my favorite
lipstick today. Watch a skunk
as it turns the corner to
Alvaro Obregon.
And wait.
Laurel Benjamin is a San Francisco Bay Area poet, active with the Women’s Poetry Salon. She curates Ekphrastic Writers and is a reader for Common Ground Review. Publications: Pirene's Fountain, Lily Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, Taos Journal of Poetry, Mom Egg Review, Gone Lawn, Nixes Mate. She received an Honorable Mention for the Ruben Rose Memorial Poetry Competition. Laurel holds an MFA from Mills College. She invented a secret language with her brother. Her new collection, Flowers on a Train, is forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. Find her at: https://www.laurelbenjamin.com
Nuala McEvoy started writing and taught herself to paint approximately five years ago, at the age of fifty. Since then, her writing has since been published in several literary magazines and she has read her poems on podcasts. Nuala paints daily using acrylics on canvas. She started submitting her artwork for publication a year ago, and since then over 100 of her paintings have been accepted for publication in over fifty literary magazines and reviews. Her art has been accepted as cover art for several of these reviews. She has had two exhibitions in Münster, Germany and currently holds an exhibition in The Cavendish Centre, 44 Hallam Street, London.
x @mcevoy¬¬_nuala, https://linktr.ee/nualamcevoy
