By Kathleen Lee

Featured Art: Mall Series (3) by Doug MacDowell

After you left the party
someone’s dog picked a fight
with the resident ancient hound
and big human hullabaloo ensued
followed by talk of infectious diseases,
tricks for making perfect piecrust,
the battle of Waterloo. Literature
was avoided (too controversial),
as was real estate (too dull). The Sanskrit scholar
refused to recite a poem we yearned to hear
called Remembrance of Songs of the Future.
Everyone wanted to know the truth
about you so I spun one tale after another
about lost items, Cochabamba
(remember the awful soup we ate every single day?),
and the exigencies of soul retrieval.
They toasted your future with pretentious cocktails
while I sat on my heart to keep it quiet.
Without you, my partner in all things stealthy,
I couldn’t slip away early.
Then it was late, dark and windy.
I stepped outside to gaze into the vastness
overhead and the cosmos was as it ever is—
persistent and forgettable.

Kathleen Lee is the author of a novel and a collection of short stories. Now she writes poems.