the mafia, baby

december 26th.
a pocketknife, a lighter, and a decided lack of holiday cheer.
i'm out of cigarettes.
christ, i don't know how i'm going to make it out alive.
it's my job to kneel in the garden
outside drawing-room windows,
to steal words and hide them in a black-box recorder,
to protect and serve all by my lonesome —
but those mafia wives are just so persuasive.

january 3rd.
the world is black and white.
cigarette smoke sits comfortably in the air.
men tip their fedoras to the ladies
who stroke their pearl necklaces and laugh.
billie holiday's voice croons out from the phonograph,
and she winks at us behind her song,
singing us into another late evening.
vodka makes me think things are all bad,
but billie is changing my mind.