"Mississippi Walkabout" by JC Alfier

Some days the turmoil at home boils over when I fail to explain my need for last calls and neon, for a barmaid’s black-heeled boot to kick open a walk-in cooler.

Before slaps or dishes fly my way, I need quick parting for a town I’ve never been to. Say Yazoo City. Got here on the Crescent Route train.

Down North Main, shards of morning shadows reckon my footfalls. I follow crows. They bear me no fealty.

Each squawk tests the air like an omen, like a mouthful of sour breath. But how the hell would I know, save the hour’s need is dark wings to stalk.

Trees branch ragged into autumn, roots shouldering driveways. In the window of defunct Main Street Café a crushed cigarette in a half-full coffee cup was all that was left someone to utter.

These streets are where I drift when the world at home begins to fracture, though no one here need pull me out of my funk, everything at peace around me: a stranger.

And as the day’s sure to be misremembered, like the crows, it means me no harm, no dissonance, the husky winds asking us all to thin our hungers.

JC Alfier’s (they/them) most recent book of poetry, The Shadow Field, was published by Louisiana Literature Press (2020). Journal credits include The Emerson Review, Faultline, New York Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, Penn Review, Southern Poetry Review, and Vassar Review. They are also an artist doing collage and double-exposure work.