Decorum

October 2024 | poetry

I take in a terrific piano concert: classic

ragtime, boogie-woogie, rhumba-boogie

from New Orleans, a couple of blues numbers.

Professor Longhair tribute. A boogie version

of the national anthem; it never sounded better.

The pianist’s fingers blur; from his left hand

the bass rumbles like a train under the street.

Beside him a drummer sits on a box-drum

he beats time on, and

I’m grooving,

moving

my body all over along with the drumbeat;

doing a jitterbug

sitting down.

Big smile all over my face.

Keeping time with every beat. If only

someone else would stand and dance!

The Texas town that I moved here from, lots

of people would have been up and dancing—

in the aisles, down front, at the back, anywhere

there was room.  Shouts and whistles

between numbers, hair and feet flying.

This Midwest audience: the woman next to me

wears a cautious smile. A couple behind me

peer studiously at the pianist. A few people

tap feet or joggle their heads. That’s it?

After each number, polite applause.

I’m totally frustrated! And damn!

That curly-haired drummer is so hot

perched there on his cajón

with his twice-pierced ears

and the stud at the side of his nose.

Lynn D. Gilbert

Lynn D. Gilbert’s poems have appeared in Arboreal, Bacopa Literary Review, Blue Unicorn (Pushcart nomination), Consequence, Footnote, The Good Life Review, Sheepshead Review, and elsewhere. Her poetry volume has been a finalist in the Gerald Cable and Off the Grid Press book contests. A founding editor of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, she lives in a suburb of Austin and reviews poetry submissions for Third Wednesday journal.

Questions for Dead People

July 2024 | poetry

when moonlight bathes the cold marble of your headstone,

do you cling to the echoes of old laughter?

what burdens sleep in the final exhale?

you, where the tiger lilies won’t bloom

and songbirds fill spaces we cannot see you go

can you tell me if a holy hand found yours adrift

in the currents of a starlit eternity?

or is your faith another fiction?

are my questions dandelion wishes,

seeds fallen where i find you

at the edge of all my doubts,

prayers i’ll never know you hear;

can you feel the ghost of my belief

memories of silence and empty spaces we cannot fathom?

do you know

when i find the flowers dead,

i think of you

Caitie Young

Caitie L. Young (they/them) is a poet and writer from Kent, Ohio, where they earned their MFA in Creative Writing from Kent State University (NEOMFA). Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Puerto Del Sol, new words {press}, The Atlanta Review, The Sonora Review, The Minnesota Review, and elsewhere. They were the first-place recipient of the 2022 Foothill Editors Prize for best graduate student poetry and are a pushcart nominee.