Suzanne Rindell

ARABY

One really shouldn't
be allowed to tell hero-
less stories: The kind
where the woman says she hasn't

tasted baklava and the man
says she really should and takes her
to the Gloucester Green coach station
where they walk circles in an arena
of eavesdropping bricks. One shouldn't

tell how the woman smiles dumbly, not
knowing the difference between the falafel
and the baklava and how they end up
eating both: honeyed fingers, waxed
paper, stalls eating monoxide
and philo crumbs
for the pigeons.

Next week
it will be an orange; a
blood orange.

Suzanne Rindell hails from Northern California, but am currently working toward my Ph.D. in English literature at Rice University. Recent and upcoming fiction and poetry publications include Nimrod, StorySouth, The Texas Review, Convergence, Sulphur River Literary Review, The Georgetown Review, The Absinthe Literary Review, Whistling Shade, and others.