It was a tornado or hurricane that hurled me here,
my hair a complete mess, my lips caked with blood.
But that isn’t the worst part. The worst part is that
I’m in some small town where I’ve never been before
and all I hear is country music on the radio. And equally
disturbing is that all the women are walking around
in sundresses that are way too large for their bodies.
Dogs bark at me from behind closed doors, and when
I try to calm myself, I feel the same alienation I felt as
a child looking out my bedroom window onto the backyards,
some of which had clothes drying on clotheslines. I’d recall
that I had parents who brought me here, and though neither
of them understood me, at least they fed me, drove me to the
movies, and gave me an allowance so that I could buy gumballs
and comic books. Other than that, I was mostly bored, and
the loneliness seldom diminished, even when I was around
my neighborhood friends, who are now just faded memories…
Written By: Jeffrey Zable
Jeffrey Zable is a teacher and conga drummer who plays Afro-Cuban folkloric music for dance classes and Rumbas around the San Francisco Bay Area.
His poetry, fiction,and non-fiction have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and anthologies. Recent writing in Hypnopomp, Ink In Thirds, Nauseated Drive, Tigershark, After The Pause, Third Wednesday, Brushfire, Smoky Blue, Alba, Greensilk, Corvus, and many others. In 2017 he was nominated for both The Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.