UNTIED SHOES

I only remember snatches; how hot it was;
the peeling dark green shutters that opened
onto the street; drinking my cafe au lait
beside the hole they left wide; watching

tourists carrying disposable beverage cups
along Decatur Street, cheap beads
hung around their throats; the smell of beer
and Hurricanes; laughter; bits of garbled
conversation running together like thin paints.

I barely noticed him at the crosswalk-
only a snip of a boy, maybe eight or nine.
The driver didn't notice either, until
he was a blur of blue jeans and dark skin
arcing over the hood of her late model sedan.

His sneakers remained on the pavement,
untied laces draped like vines.


Christine Laine
TAR
CHRISTINE LAINE is a writer and a student pilot. In the past, she's been a magician's assistant, a baker, an extra in a few movies, a licensed artist in New Orleans's French Quarter, and a soldier in this girl's U. S. Army. She enjoys making lists on sticky notes when she isn't writing poems. Her work has appeared in Niederngasse, New World Poetry, Free Zone Quarterly, The White Shoe Irregular, Bay Review Liberal Arts Journal, Friction Magazine, 2River View, Kota Press, Absinthe, Stirring (writing as Kit Sullivan), Clean Sheets, Erosha, Beauty for Ashes, Pierian Springs, AnotherSun, The Melic Review, and others. She is also a contributor to In Their Own Words: A Generation Defining Itself. Her 22-poem collection entitled The Poverty of Birds will appear in the anthology Before the Last Shadow Fades. Her first book of poetry, Allegory, was published this spring. Her second book, The Weight of Dust, will be released later this year. Homepage: http://celaine.com/.