COFFEE HOUSE

by Mary K O'Melveny

“This is the only place where I can relax and feel free, even if it’s only for a few hours,” Hadis Lessani Delijam said recently as she sat at a coffee shop, her hair uncovered, and chatted with two young men in Kabul, Afghanistan. Credit: Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times, May 25, 2019

who knew escape
could be simple
like this   my cup
steaming  hints of
cardamom spice
drops of honey
our round table
thin metal chairs
tremble as we
laugh  full throated

here in Kabul
laughter often
eludes   cloistered
behind headscarves
after all who smiles
freely when she
is camouflaged
I ask my friends
this question  as
we settle in

conversations
easier now
than in our youth
we talk of peace
how we prefer
noisy songs of
blackbirds   warblers
drongos  bluethroats
to drone whines
or sidewalk bombs

how we worry
Taliban elders
sitting at tables
in Doha with
Americans
will force us from
these safe spaces
whirling back to
patriarchy

here   coffee in
one hand    my nails
red as poppies
I look through love
notes posted on
the café wallboard
I belong to
no one   this fact
will fuel my
path to freedom

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press.

SHOOT THE BASTARDS DOWN

by Janice Lynch Schuster

They will know us by our guns
The fierce industry of our arms
As we drag our heavy bodies
Loaded and overwrought
Into coffee shops where we never sit
With our backs to the door

We will think they love us
When really, it is fear that keeps them
Frozen at our sides, unable to turn
In any direction.  We can take them out
And never feel a thing.

We will carve our names and terrors
Into wood and steel, the way we once
Left our initials in trees and school desks

We will want someone to know
That we were here, and by damn
When the levee breaks
We will shoot that water down.


Janice Lynch Schuster is the author of a collection, Saturday at the Gym, and has been published in various print and online venues, including Poet Lore, Your Daily Poem, and The Broadkill Review. She writes about health care and public policy, lives in Annapolis, MD, and works in Washington, DC.