Alan Ireland’s most recent poem to appear here was “Kismet” (March 2017)
Fortune Teller
By Alan Ireland
Only a candle
can illuminate the future.
This caged flame,
threatening conflagration,
sits atop a tiny table.
My palm unfolds
like a roll of parchment,
to be read by a wrinkled haruspex.
You will go away,
You will come back.
You will live with her again,
but it will be different.
In the distance,
the sound of traffic
is the singing of ghosts.
A poem about the Shinjuku area of Tokyo, where there used to be (and possibly still are) many such fortune tellers.
I can see them now.