In the Valley

Backdrop. It was a place
where you could buy a house
for 80K. That was a little
then, even less now. We used to
go to Vannie Tilden’s
& look in the bakery cases,
& I was allowed to get anything
I wanted, though in the end it was always
a cream horn on a tiny white plate
& a cup of coffee for you.

Paperbacks were a dollar
& change at the bookstore
& you let me get a stack at a time,
& we drove down to the beach
& stayed in a motel with a big,
old-fashioned key, & when I think back
to that time I wish I could go back
& crawl up onto the big four-poster bed
next to you the way I did every morning
while you were still asleep.

I was too young then to be afraid
that you might not wake up—
or (worse?) might not want to wake up.
He was already dead then
but you were still alive
so we drove down to Mexico
& went to a restaurant in Matamoros
where a man lit a cigarette
at his table between
our booth & the front door.

We sat in the dark
& watched
as the smoke drifted slowly
toward the ceiling.

Dragon’s beard

I sat on the edge
of a bathtub
in a hotel room
in Montreal
talking to my sister
on the phone.
Our niece was
born earlier
that day while
the boys were
in Chinatown
with their dad
buying Dragon’s beard
from a street vendor—
fine strands of
sugar woven
around and around
a bed of crushed
peanuts. There
were crushed peanut
shells on the floor
of the restaurant
in New York,
another night,
empty bowls,
the waitress saying
if you don’t throw
them down we will—
a threat
no, not a threat—
a promise—
I promise, I said,
I won’t forget

I won’t forget

Leah Browning is the author of six chapbooks of poetry and fiction. Her writing has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Valparaiso Fiction Review, Four Way Review, The Broadkill Review, Oyster River Pages, Forge, Watershed Review, Belletrist Magazine, Poetry South, The Stillwater Review, Superstition Review, and other literary journals and anthologies.