ABC Super Discount, Fulton Street
She’s there everyday
after her children leave for school.
Takes a silver-colored coffee maker from the shelf,
spins it around in one hand,
an ornament for a holiday
where people drink coffee on mornings
at dining tables with matching chairs.
Fine cups ka-klink on their teeth,
the sound of money.
Once, she was a girl in a hot bedroom
waiting for a boy’s parents and hers to reach a decision.
When the bargain was made for her hand,
her mother hugged the minister. Happy
because she and the boy would move to New York
to better work, family dinners, and morning coffee.
That week, she got a ring from the pawn shop,
the same white dress her mother had worn
and a promise:
Everything is going to be better there.
A. K. Herman was born in Tobago. A. K. writes fiction, non-fiction and poetry, and has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Competition and placed second in the Small Axe Literary Journal Contest. A. K. has published in Lolwe, Small Axe Journal, Aster(ix) Journal, Isele Magazine and others.
