“Over Coffee- In Memory for Jerry Monroe” by Kenneth Salzman

For Jeremy Monroe, in memoriam

I’ll have another cup of coffee please and one for the debonair man whose words are wisps of steam hovering above my cup; whose words are tiny cohetes, tightly packed with long experience and deep knowing, bursting over the Ajijic plaza; whose words are rocketing from Mexican Train to Bolaño to Vivaldi to remembered icy winds crossing Lake Michigan.

I’ll have another cup of coffee please and time enough under the sun to learn his laughing memories of 25-cent double features on long-ago Saturdays at the Belmont Theater; to learn about a nineteenth century sage forever sharing living space in the family home in Lakeview; to learn about the gulf between the study and the practice; to learn the secrets of his latest story and poem.

I’d like another cup of coffee please and time enough for new words over coffee and beneath a mariachi moon. --Kenneth Salzmann