It is mostly her smile
what pins me to my seat,
how it totters on her face,
how it dances to the mandolin’s music,
how her lips unfold and flutter
to the sound of each eight note.
Sitting in a booth
at the Landmark Bar and Restaurant,
I watch Eva Scow play
her Brazilian mandolin.
She is half-enveloped by the dimness
of the corner that serves as bandstand.
The mandolin’s wood and her skin
melt into the single orange glaze
of the neon lights that hang overhead
like a pair of condors,
one shaped like an electric guitar,
the other a sign that reads Budweiser.
Her fingers fly up and down
the mandolin’s neck;
notes hatch and spring into the air;
they swarm in circles
and then clash against the windows
in a crazed effort to spill out to the night.
It is her fingers, too,
like beating wings
seized by the orange light of the Budweiser condor.
Her fingers, but mostly her smile,
so unlike the other smiles
inside the bar full of mandolin—
the shrill osprey smiles
of the drunk college kids in the next booth
that scan the air for prey;
the quiet harrier smiles
of the couple at the far table
pecking at each other;
the tumultuous vulture smiles
of the waiters that circle the tables;
owl smiles, kestrel smiles, falcon smiles,
but none like the smile of the mandolin,
an albatross that clings to Eva Scow’s chest
and waits for the moment to unfurl its wings
over the sea of half-empty beer bottles,
of hamburger carcasses and cell phones and wandering hands,
the moment when it will sweep down
amidst the squabble of voices and the waves of heads
to snatch the heart of the night with its beak
and emerge again into the air with a smile on its face.
--Daniel A., 27
