Rich Youmans
North Falmouth, Massachusetts, USA

Atlantic City Ephemera

That 1905 menu from the Chalfonte Hotel,
its scalloped border now brown and crisp.
She liked to pick out favorites: Sea Turtle Soup,
Domestic Goose, Charlotte Russe and Figs.

An Art Deco poster of the High-Diving Horse,
captured in mid-air. A long-limbed rider, sleek as an eel,
tucks her head into its mane, her strawberry hair
(“Like mine,” she’d say) rising like an eternal flame.

Now the hand-painted postcard of the Sunday Boardwalk:
men in black bowlers, women in frocks, waists
pinched tight by tulle. The ocean a robin’s egg blue.
On the back, a message that could have been mine:
My dear, where are you?

In the last sleeve, a note she once slipped in,
its paper the rose of dusk’s horizon, and suddenly
I can’t breathe

love letter …
in its flowing script
her perfume