Four Poems
by John Jeffire
The Girl Who Paints Pictures
Temptation hangs across the avenue, a toothpick dangling between his lips. When his yellowed eyes find yours, you cannot look away. He whistles from the neon marquee of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’s Social Club, the Halloween figures painted on the facing wall beckoning with comical skeleton grins and bone fingers. He leans against the traffic light stanchion, offering a deal, can’t miss, baby, hey-hey, I got your hook-up, girl. He hovers at the dew-covered benches at the corner park, plastic nickel bags laid on a cement chess board behind an oak tree as old as the city itself.
Tattooed men unloading curbside moving vans, cabbies shouting postured impatience, the life-affirming bursts of Italian sausage, curry, and marinara unable to smother the strain of urine, car exhaust, and garbage rotting in the gutters. Exhale into the swarming jungle of shuffling bodies, city busses hissing, and vendors barking on every open inch of sidewalk: sprawling rainforest of concrete, avenues, high rises, and every shade of skin and tone of voice and threat you can imagine.
Fear itself.
Under the cover of darkness, a white banner too frayed to catch a breeze.
The Type
His girlfriend at the time dug the type. College degree in something or other, sweaters he didn’t actually wear but tied around his neck—probably couldn’t throw a spiral or explain man coverage.
“Please, please, have a seat. Make yourselves comfortable.”
They sat down. On the coffee table was a magazine, The New Yorker, which was weird because they lived in Michigan. Next to it was a lop-sided bowl made of different colored glass.
“What can I get you to drink? I mix a killer G and T.”
“He sure does,” the new neighbor guy’s wife said. She wore a jumpsuit that was all kinds of colors and a bright yellow bandana-thingy. He wasn’t sure if she looked hot or ridiculous.
“Sounds delightful,” his girlfriend said, beaming.
He had never heard her use the word “delightful” before. Who used that word? Looking at his watch, he estimated the number of steps to the front door.
He found the magazine, thumbed through until he found a comic. He looked at the picture, two guys sitting at a bar, no color, boring black and white, not even a good drawing. He read the words over several times. No matter how many times he read it, the comic wasn’t funny. The only thing funny about it was how not funny it was.
“Here we are,” the new neighbor guy said, setting down a tray with four drinks. He was proud of the drinks, the lime slices. His wife set out coasters with sailboats on them. Her eyeshadow matched the blues in her jumpsuit and the coasters.
His girlfriend, now his ex-girlfriend, looked around the living room, still smiling.
Eight, nine steps to the door, he remembered thinking.
Seven if I hustle.
Confessions
He cannot not lift his eyes.
How long?
Confession or denial? The seconds grow heavy. Something in her whispers cause the least pain. She looks at him as he looks out the kitchen window into the evening darkness. She does not think of whose pain she would be easing.
Two months.
He winces. Suspicions validated. An easing like the quick nothingness of anesthetic slides inside him.
She turns from him, looks away, out the kitchen window, into the evening’s dark nothing.
Someone would speak next.
Who?
Grifted
She regifted all, a painless sloughing of skin. Vulture breeze, numb in the wreckage, stripped to bone, oblivious of the price tag dancing from his sleeve.
BIO: John Jeffire was born in Detroit. In 2005, his novel Motown Burning was named Grand Prize Winner in the Mount Arrowsmith Novel Competition and in 2007 it won a Gold Medal for Regional Fiction in the Independent Publishing Awards. Speaking of Motown Burning, former chair of the Pulitzer Jury Philip F. O'Connor said, “It works. I don't often say that, but it has a drive and integrity that gives it credible life....I find a novel with heart.” In 2009, Andra Milacca included Motown Burning in her list of “Six Savory Novels Set in Detroit” along with works by Elmore Leonard, Joyce Carol Oates, and Jeffrey Eugenides. His first book of poetry, Stone + Fist + Brick + Bone, was nominated for a Michigan Notable Book Award in 2009. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine called the book “a terrific one for our city.” His short story “Boss” appeared in Coolest American Stories 2022, which won the International Book Awards Prize for Fiction Anthologies. In 2022, his novel River Rouge won the 2022 American Writing Awards for Legacy Fiction while his poetry collection A Temple for Tomorrows was named one of three finalists. For more on the author and his work, visit writeondetroit.com.