By: Madison Micucci

Dear Spokane,
.

You wear Spring like a Bride
.

lilac perfume and cherry blossom rouge
.

a river veil tumbles eternally down the elegant slope of your back
.

as I draw nearer, chiffon mist grazes my face, soft and wet like fresh petal kisses
.

the smell of you seeps gently into my memory like tea, never to be washed out
.

beneath the steeples of sentinel pine trees whose shadows dapple the soft earth like stained glass, yellow wildflowers spring
.
perfect bouquets, from a carpet of needles

.

I cant bring myself to pick one
.

wouldn’t I be next then…to blush, wearing the Lilac perfume?
.

and how could I follow such an immaculate beauty?
i wonder if I’ll find you again someday, just as you were when I left

yours,
MM

###

Nola (at night)

She’s the can-can dancer everyone has loved at least once.

Sultry. Beguiling. Her grenadine pout curls upward the more you drink.

And when she kicks up her skirt, the cobweb stockings that cling to her chimerical form belie her pain. They reveal (but barely) the aching, historical bruises she wears underneath- impossible to heal. So easy to ignore.

Groping down Bourbon Street (that lurching horde of ripe, faceless bodies emboldened by booze) feels like being caught in a choke hold between her thighs.

Sweatypissy, baldly bawdy.

Surrender or suffocate.

“Another Sazerac!” She shrieks, squeezing tighter.

Half-paralyzed, half-seduced, you obey.

As she cackles, her wild hair tumbles down past the wrought iron balconies of her shoulders in a grey tangle of Spanish moss.

Your eyes become dinner plates. They see your body. It becomes the grinning marionette of that cherry mouth’d, Dionysian puppeteer.

Surrender or suffocate.

It’s more of a fact than a threat.

For only Nola can trap you outside of yourself and dangle you like her dancing toy. Only Nola can smother and release you, spinning like a top into the kaleidoscope night, knowing that soon, you’ll stumble back for another dance, guilty and glistening.

So surrender and you’ll leave unscathed.

With but a bluesy strain buried in your ear like a worm. And a chilly flutter in your chest, as if the grey ghost of a lonely Damsel fly landed softly on your heart.