Talking Terror

by Sachi Nag
The Writer's Block
Honorable Mention, January 2009
Judged by Elena Karina Byrne


On our way to Fundy City in ten
inches of snow, a familiar cab driver
asked me if I lost anyone in those sixty
hours of Mumbai.

We couldn’t take our eyes off
the Christmas lights, and the carols
on the airwaves, so haunting, we were feeling
kinship in the gravy of victimhood,

when the hardened ice beneath the slush
stunned the front tyres, and we skidded
rear-ending a parked van and spun
over the edge into a pile of snow

from last year. Strangers stopped by
with shovels and hooks, powering us out.
We dusted jackets, shook hands;
restarted, slow, almost like roadkill,

eyes riveted along the routine way –
now as sinuous as a strange
white feathered boa – the cabbie’s sure hands
shaking at the wheel.