The mariachi against
the brick wall makes me think
I don’t belong in this scene.
Jane dumps all the
cigarettes in my pack onto the table
between us. She curls the edges back, rolls them down
until the box is inside out, cubic again, if crumpled.
In boyish blue ballpoint, she scrawls J.F.K. was here!
“What does it
stand for?” Her smile flickers
syncopated mischief. “Well, my dad’s Jewish,
and my mom’s a Jane Austen nut, so they named me
Jane Fairfax Kohen.”
“So you’re
Jewish?” She shakes her head. “I don’t believe
in god,”
she says. “Do you believe in gods?” Her laugh like a symbol
punctures the guitar. “Nah, I’m an atheist.”
Dramatic irony: incongruity
between a dramatic situation
and accompanying words whose inappropriateness it reveals.
“Kavi,” she
says, my name a mist
in her mouth, “what does it mean?”
I tell her only the
literal sense, not
what it really means—god thrown.
