by Kerfe Roig
My hand craves a guitar
A Golden Shovel with lyrics from “Little Talks,” by Monsters and Men
I don’t like walking around this old and empty house
So hold my hand, I’ll walk with you my dear /
The stairs creak as you sleep; it’s keeping me awake.
The streets of grey pigeons flood with movement. I
am lost at three intersecting streets that spider the city, I don’t
have a phone. The coat is lightweight canvas, cold like
a river tarp. I scatter a torn muffin for the pigeons. I am walking,
eating, the pale light before rush hour. Around
the turn, a bearded man, who later is you, says, “Don’t feed the pigeons,” this
is your wisdom, “They expect it and forget how to forage.” The old
beach and its singing waves are close, and
you don’t know what forage is, the want of it. But the music empties
us, the waves only a few strands away. I scatter more crumbs. It’s a house,
a home, here on the street, birds looking for what food might appear, so
deep the mirage. You ask to borrow my coat, a young request. I hold
it out for you. We watch grey doves scatter with wings open, my
fingers sticky with muffin crumbs, my hand
craves a guitar. The waves roll chords in the distance. I’ll
sing again someday. Without any signal between us, we walk
down the road to the beach, past parked cars, tourists with
cameras, green shuttered houses, shorebirds and pigeons together. You
and I in the damp, quickly move to the water, my
bones vibrating with song, and we admit all that’s dear
to us is the rain, the pigeons and the beach. The
waves are clashing and brassy, like rocky stairs
up a fretboard. I slip through the sand with you, the wind creaks
and we breathe the salty spray. As
we wait, the sunset is red as pomegranate. You
are drawn to the undertone, the rough roar. Nothing sleeps
now. And really, it only takes birds two days to find another food source, it’s
true, they don’t need us, and you slip closer to the sky, keeping
me running, playing air guitar with the ocean. This is not an end for me,
or you, or for the music. We are awake.
Lynn Finger’s (she/her) works have appeared in 8Poems, Perhappened, Book of Matches, Fairy Piece, Drunk Monkeys, and ONE ART: a journal of poetry. Lynn also recently released a poetry chapbook, The Truth of Blue Horses, published by Alien Buddha Press. She was nominated for 2021 and 2022 Best of the Net Anthology. Lynn edits Harpy Hybrid Review, and her Twitter is @sweetfirefly2.
An American born in the state of Ohio, Kerfe Roig has resided in New York City since the age of 19. She enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Her poetry and art have been featured online by Silver Birch Press, The song is…, Pure Haiku, Visual Verse, and The Ekphrastic Reviewand published in Ella@100, Incandescent Mind, the Raw Art Review , The Anthropocene Hymnal: Songs of a self-defining era, The Polaris Trilogy, and several natureinspired anthologies. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/, and see more of her work on her website http://kerferoig.com/.