The Man in Black

Dad listened to his records with his whole body,
lay on his back on the living room floor, knees bent,
fingertips perched on his ribs.

I felt irritated
when I stepped around him,
annoyed, as he got swept away.

But when the babysitter arrived,
I made her thumb through boxes
of Dad’s records

to find the one with the man atop a train
on the cover, Johnny Cash, 1965,
Orange Blossom Special.

It had seeped within me too,
that piercing harmonica, the cadences, rhythms,
the warm timbre of a deep, male voice.

Anne Mesquita (she/her) studies poetry at the Hudson Valley Writers Center. Her work has appeared in Red Eft Review, Right Hand Pointing, and The Marbled Sigh. She works at in library administration at Columbia University. She lives in Westchester, New York with her husband and daughter.