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Sari Krosinsky’s poems have recently appeared in Adobe Walls, Collective Fallout, Contemporary American Voices, Long Island Quarterly, Main Street Rag and others. She edits Fickle Muses, an online journal of mythic poetry and fiction. She received a B.A. in religious studies and M.A. in creative writing from the University of New Mexico. She lives in Albuquerque, N.M., with her partner and cat.

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LUNCH WITH JFK

The mariachi against the brick wall makes me think
I don’t belong in this scene.

Jane dumps all the cigarettes in my pack onto the table
between us. She curls the edges back, rolls them down
until the box is inside out, cubic again, if crumpled.
In boyish blue ballpoint, she scrawls J.F.K. was here!

“What does it stand for?” Her smile flickers
syncopated mischief. “Well, my dad’s Jewish,
and my mom’s a Jane Austen nut, so they named me
Jane Fairfax Kohen.”

“So you’re Jewish?” She shakes her head. “I don’t believe in god,”
she says. “Do you believe in gods?” Her laugh like a symbol
punctures the guitar. “Nah, I’m an atheist.”

Dramatic irony: incongruity between a dramatic situation
and accompanying words whose inappropriateness it reveals.

“Kavi,” she says, my name a mist
in her mouth, “what does it mean?”

I tell her only the literal sense, not
what it really means—god thrown.