NARRATION

by Michael Keshigian

The other men from town

attempted to entice her with idle bravado,

offered to buy her drinks, asked for a dance,

in their flamboyant outfits garnered with gold.

He watched them stare intensely,

savage glances saying more than hello,

let them huddle around her

and compete for attention.

He bid his time in a faraway corner

where smoke-filled air stained his eyes

and wrote on a pad from his pocket,

sensations he would one day read to her,

when the thoughts were coherent

and courage allowed him

to rouse her from ordinary

into the extraordinary ardor of his verse

through the open doors of his heart.

He would be the different one,

the flushed eccentric with common clothes

and a black notebook, thick with words

she had never heard before.

He would be the charming misfit

who, in a warm summer eve’s breeze,

will capture her affection with a narrative

it took so many nights to contrive.

Michael Keshigian is the author of 14 poetry collections and has recently been published in the Comstock Review, Young Ravens Literary Review, Studio One, Smoky Quartz, and Jerry Jazz Musician. He has been nominated seven times for the Pushcart Prize and three times for Best of The Net.

KJ Hannah Greenberg is eclectic. She’s played oboe, participated in martial arts, learned basket weaving, and studied Middle Eastern dancing. What’s more, she’s a certified herbalist, and an AP College Board-authorized teacher of calculus. 

Her creative efforts have been nominated once for The Best of the Net in poetry, once for The Best of the Net in art, three times for the Pushcart Prize in Literature for poetry, once for the Pushcart Prize in Literature for fiction, once for the Million Writers Award for fiction, and once for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. To boot, Hannah’s had more than forty-five books published and has served as an editor for several literary journals.

Check out her latest short fiction collection, An Orbit of Chairs:

https://www.amazon.com/Orbit-Chairs-KJ-Hannah-Greenberg/dp/B0CWMMM73T

 Within its pages are two tales originally published at Yellow Mama: "Alive Another Day" and "Light Notes."

Channie's new art book, Life's Colors, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FGCTHJ6Z, just launched (hit "read sample" button). It contains images originally published by Yellow Mama.