Estelle Bajou
Estelle Bajou is a French-American polymath. Her poetry is featured or forthcoming in Cathexis, Wild Roof Journal, Heavy Feather Review, Broad River Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Middlesex, Abstract Elephant, The Closed Eye Open, and This Broken Shore. Her first poetry collection, I Never Learned to Pray, is forthcoming from Main Street Rag in 2022. Raised in a furniture factory town in the North Carolina mountains, she now lives in New York City with a bunch of houseplants. Visit her at estellebajou.com or on Twitter/Instagram @estellebajou.
THEIR VOICES CARRY FRUIT TO MY LIPS
The women lounging on the stoop
lift their heads from the hottest heat
of late June, smile as I approach.
We address the weather and laugh,
thinking of the nimbus of finality,
fry of human life, work tomorrow.
A dipping scent of littleleaf linden
and Tuesday trash floats close
in the air. We may never see the insides
of each others’ apartments, lean heads
on shoulders, remember names.
The wheel battles inertia, turns over
blank day, turns toward sunset.
One morning we’ll be gone,
with only a flight of stairs to remember
we were here at all.
Sheila-Na-Gig Inc. 