local_library Dunk’in Doughnuts

by Miriam Sagan

Published in Issue No. 246 ~ November, 2017

Dunk’in Doughnuts

in the strip mall

behind it

Early Street Cemetery

dried weeds, a look

of abandonment

each of us

carries a map of the day

sometimes creased

in sorrow

or stained

with a careless drop of coffee

from a paper cut

almost thirty years ago

I’d walk here

pregnant

in my flip-flops

and the morning heat

sit on a stool at the counter

and eat two doughnuts—

one jelly, one Boston cream,

until the drunk

next to me

said loudly:

“you

know how to treat yourself

right, you know

how to treat yourself

right”

which wasn’t quite correct

as now

there’s too much

sugar in my blood

but still the hope

of a message

as I believe

some day

one of the broken

stone angels

in that graveyard

will raise her hand

to greet me

and like a sooty pigeon

ruffle up those wings

as if to fly.

account_box More About

Miriam Sagan is the author of 30 published books, including the novel Black Rainbow (Sherman Asher, 2015) and Geographic: A Memoir of Time and Space (Casa de Snapdragon). which just won the 2016 Arizona/New Mexico Book Award in Poetry. She founded and headed the creative writing program at Santa Fe Community College until her retirement this year. Her blog Miriam’s Well (http://miriamswell.wordpress.com) has a thousand daily readers. She has been a writer in residence in two national parks, at Yaddo, MacDowell, Colorado Art Ranch, Andrew’s Experimental Forest, Center for Land Use Interpretation, Iceland’s Gullkistan Residency for creative people, and another dozen or so remote and unique places. Her awards include the Santa Fe Mayor’s award for Excellence in the Arts, the Poetry Gratitude Award from New Mexico Literary Arts, and A Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa.