A Shopping List
I’m not here for good, I know.
I’m not here for good, I know.
I could not go down to the market with the light of the morning
for the day’s food. I’m not here for good but I have time.
I let my eyes get lost under the smooth skin of the tomatoes,
wander over the large olives, dreaming of the plums, feeling the bread.
The market is clean and behind is the sea, I know.
I confess that I love this, the simplicity. The day and its luminous order,
the light of open embrace, light of air and of lavender.
I buy nothing, I have time but my home is not here.
Buying something would revive me.
I make a list, to remember. I include flowers,
a round tablecloth, wine from the Rhone and a sundial.
Someday I could return
to descend the sidestreets and buy all those things
and goat cheese in chestnut leaves, bath salts with mallow scents
and also ceramic dishes, violet and gold, handmade
like the vase for the flowers, all with the touch of life.
I would sow aromatic herbs in little flower pots
and a creeper around the windows
always open.
I would have a table of uncarved wood, a house of stone.
And the light. All the light of Provence.
Margarita Ríos-Farjat has been a fellow at the Nuevo Leon Writer’s Centre (1997–1998). She is also the winner of the following contests: Literatura Universitaria (1993), Poesia Joven de Monterrey (1997), and Nacional de Ensayo Juridico (2000). She is the author of two books of poems: Si las horas llegaran para quedarse (If the Hours Would Come to Stay) (1995) and Cómo usar los ojos (How to Use the Eyes) (2010). Her poetry has appeared in several anthologies in Mexico and many national magazines.
Matthew Brennan earned his MFA in fiction from Arizona State University. He is a novelist, translator, short-story writer, and freelance editor, and his short fiction has received several awards and fellowships. His work has appeared in several dozen journals, most recently in Pure Slush, Fiddleblack, and the Eunoia Review, and is forthcoming from Recess Magazine. Brennan serves as an assistant fiction editor for the Hayden’s Ferry Review and Speech Bubble Magazine.
