Postman Postulate
Brings the mail without exceptions.
Smells like a prom limousine.
Soft rabbit eyes—
Doesn't read my letters! Respects
privacy. (I too am private,
but not as much as he.)
How methodical the delivery.
How clean the procession.
How unopened the mouth.
God what I would give
to be slung in a mailbag
with breathing holes and taken
door to door, like a valentine.
Philadelphia Gas Station Valentine
The gaudy fairy painted on recycled card stock
cannot breathe beneath the dark purples.
Her gaze cannot meet mine. The raspberry,
she says. Her words: a heavy dark marker
inside a man's wood. Palpitations!
Who allows this demon to speak
of what is beautiful between us?
Jasmine
perfume
poisons the train's third car—
Might as well fog the windows.
Her sleeping body ripples and heaves.
Her head lolls towards
me? The floor? FOR MY MAN
blazed across her chest in Copperplate.
The train jerks and grunts.
Out the window,
the sun glares right back at me,
blinding polka dots— (Do it!)—
between the trees and my flattering reflection.
So many trees in Connecticut.
Now we pass a river.
Now a motor boat
manned by a boy in a red muscled shirt,
his father on his back.
Fences now. A law firm.
Quiet line of cars jamming Main St.
FOR MY MAN drools a line
from chin to vinyl,
suddenly waking
to spritz herself, once more,
with the chemical flowers. Nobody
raises a white hand against her.
Maya Pindyck is the author of the chapbook, Locket, Master, which won a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship in 2006. She is the recipient of Bellingham Review's 49th Parallel Poetry Award and her poems have appeared in elimae, Mississippi Review, Sink Review, and Sycamore Review. She holds an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Brooklyn, NY.