Caught Unaware, by Margo Davis

New Jersey, 1982, photography by Helen Levitt (USA) 1982

Caught Unaware                             
                         
How revealing. A woman roots    
 
between the car seats for her folded twenty or the severed limb  
of a sleepytime pet that her man  
          
had yanked free for Becky or Andrew or Tina Marie. Or perhaps  
it’s the house key fallen off its ring.  
 
Or say she digs for the ignition key he’ll need before night shift.   
 
On she tunnels, cussing, confident  
she has no audience. As she dives deeper a street photographer  
 
captures her bottom full as a bloated  
moon, opened parachute, or lumpy cushion bursting at its seams.  
 
Almost intimate, the slow way she  
 
wriggles out the car door. Her sociological dig unearths a missing  
button from a faded hand-me-down   
 
handed off, granite gum wads and a moldy grape jelly glaze. Yet  
another thankless task for a woman  
 
who had aptitude, got things done. Hadn’t she been there for her  
 
family and neighbors who now stare 
with the cold eye of news reporters? What, she says, what is it.  
 
For once, no comeback as Fishy  
Ms. Effie wipes stray whiskers with the back of her damp hand   
 
while old man Lis openly smirks. 
 
If this woman sees her car in a Helen Levitt exhibit, will she  
recognize this side of herself?        

Margo Davis

Margo Davis finds herself often returning to her first love, ekphrastic poetry, for its rich narrative. Recent poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Deep South Magazine, and MockingHeart Review. A three-time Pushcart nominee, Margo's forthcoming chapbook will be published by Finishing Line Press in late-fall.