The sidewalk sparkles in the lowering light.
The air is blue, breezy, blistering cold.
My hood keeps flying backwards
as I count my steps for comfort
and curse aloud over my advanced years,
grasping my bottle of 12-year-old Scotch
with stiff fingers while I entertain a dream
of hot toddies when I finally get to chez moi,
as the French say. A crazy cyclist flies by
wearing yellow goggles and a leather jacket.
“How cold is it?” said Johnny’s audience on cue
a half century ago, “I don’t know but I noticed
that all the witches are wearing thermal underwear.”
I laugh at the old joke; all the new ones are about
bodily functions and the fourth hole, wherever,
whatever, why-ever the fuck that is in this nasty
new world. I climb stealthily up the porch
steps so my neighbors won’t hear me
and turn to each other, nodding knowingly
about the elderly celebrant on the floor below.
Alec Solomita’s work has appeared in the Southwest Review, The Mississippi Review, The Lake, and many more journals and anthologies. He was shortlisted by the Bridport Prize and Southword Journal. His chapbook “Do Not Forsake Me,” was published in 2017 and his full-length poetry book, “Hard To Be a Hero,” was released in the spring of 2021. He’s just finished another, tentatively titled “Short Change.”
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