How Do You Break Up with a Friend Like Jonah

By Dan McCarthy

Sugarless, beautiful,
another day in Nineveh
draped in ashcloth, elbows
on our knees. We wait
for bombastic redemption,
fertile sterility;
we charged hierodules
out with thin-toweled
merchants’ lead bars
and fruit stands;
aplomb and guilty crowd,
we pick cuticle fights and avoid
our crooked paths
on the arid streets.
A wake of acrid faces
follows Jonah. Coming down
the street with his hand
high, anxious in his forecast,
Jonah spots me squatting
on a clay pot. A lame
conspirator’s claim, I’m told
I’m too nice.
You know Jonah, what he’s about.
He’ll tell me all fish innards
and smiling dry ribs
and how, “it’s true, it’s true,
it’s true-I swear.”
I could have sucked the last
plum longer, I’ll think.

– Dan McCarthy lives in Lawrence.