Today’s Poem

The most beautiful girl

in town—is not. She moved

to Tanzania. Waking in a house

at the foot of Mt. Kilamanjaro

after hearing all the scratch and squawk

prehistoric birds nesting

on her roof could muster.

It’s hard to imagine this scene

without her singing and floating

off into the clouds, wireless.

“It’s not like it was in Niger,”

she writes to me, not mentioning

knives that carved the hard-won

stipend from her purse.

Strange to see her as the house-

mother for twelve college girls.

It’s Ramadan now and they all take

turns fasting with the one girl

who’s Muslim. But I pray

she doesn’t starve too long.

Back home a town still teeters

at the swing of her hips.  

-Jason Braun