Mary McCall

After-Prom at the Diner


Layers of tulle and pleated polyester squeeze
into booths; the guys have long since
shrugged off their jackets, left them behind
in the limo. A waitress named Florence
calls me honey, hands me a menu as long
as the parkway. When the coffee comes,
I add two mini creamers, one packet of Sweet’N Low—
the way Pop-Pop taught me. The slow
clink-clink-clink of spoon against mug,
the clack-clack-clack of the PATH whose slow,
body-sway rhythm weaved with the spicy
scent of Pop-Pop’s pipe tobacco that lingered
on his jacket. Outside, our limo driver leans
against the trunk, blows smoke rings
into the syrup-thick darkness, the rustling
of Pop-Pop’s Star-Ledger over our Sunday morning
scrambled eggs, his booming laugh that could
scare away the Jersey devil. Girls unafraid
of hairspray and spray tans
smooth paper napkins over
their sweetheart necklines when our pancakes
and burgers come out. You pluck a grape jelly
from my pyramid of packets, carefully,
like a Jenga tile. They never have orange jam,
I say, echoing Pop-Pop, and you just smile
at the only pale girl in this tan town.
You hold my hand, like my mother did
when the doctor showed us the X-ray of Pop-Pop’s lungs
riddled with holes like 22. Corsages litter
the Formica tables, waxy under the hum
of florescent lighting. Anything but calla lilies,
I said, when you asked me
which one to get for tonight,
for our slow, body-sway rhythm
mixed with your spicy scent.
The scrape of jelly on toast, the scrape of shovel,
against dirt that rained on calla lilies resting on
waxy, cherry oak. Your coffee is getting cold,
you say. Soon we’ll have to squeeze back
into the limo, to our Seaside Heights rental
for the weekend with the moon
as round as plastic-wrapped cookies piled by the cashier.




Letter to My Future Poem


You’ll start as most things do:
with color. A flash of cerulean
across a gray-streaked sky,

a dusty rose smear as the sun
bends its head to the ground.
You’re a summer storm that begins

with freckled sidewalks, followed
by a deluge of words that drips from
groggy midnight notes and ends

with you sprinkled within
my grocery list. I get my best ideas
in the cereal aisle. You’re a sudden

surprise, like bottom of the bag
French fries, the flip of a towel
across my boyfriend’s back, the knot

of concern on a toddler’s brow
when she learns the word “no.”
I’ll paint myself in a different voice

the way children do, their skin
a canvas. Next: your form.
A slow, languid backstroke

across stanzas that mirrors
sea and sky. Or, a breaststroke
punctuated with short breaths,

the Whack-A-Mole motion
of my head darting beneath
the surface. You’re a stone-skipped

ripple that births other ripples,
patterning the pond in bullseyes
like water rings on a bar

until you reach an ending
I cannot plan in advance
like a paint-by-numbers book.

Perhaps there won’t be one—
just a splash of color, like rain
on a palm-shadowed sidewalk

and the sweet smell after rain
from bacteria spores slumbering
in soil, waiting to be released.


Mary McCall is pursuing her Ph.D. in rhetoric/composition at Purdue University where she also teaches first-year composition. Her poetry was nominated twice for the 2010 Best of the Net and has appeared in Mezzo Cammin, Chantarelle's Notebook, Decompression, and elsewhere.

Current Issue:
June 2014

Taylor Emily Copeland
Steve DeFrance
Mitchell Grabois
John Grey
Richard Luftig
Mary McCall
Simon Perchik
Tim Pilgrim
April Salzano

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