Maya Lowy

Registry

Fox doesn’t use Jump bikes, likes
to pay damp cash. At diners she orders
sides of skinny fries, a beer, the strongest
IPA on tap, or sometimes an Anchor Steam
in the brown bottle. In the DMV she scowls.
She rides a Vespa, or the bus, or jumps
in the back of people’s purple station wagons,
crawls over passenger seats to lean
on back doors that won’t open.
Rarely is she the second one picked up.
She spreads her legs wide in the back,
accepts offerings with a nod. Prefers
not to smoke outside. Ducks at corners
with security cameras, or pulls up her gray hoodie.
She’s got several of these, all the same,
all the same as the ones everyone else has.
Wary of trackers, she downloads no apps,
texts like telegrams. Lists of street corners.
Swiping singles online, you’ll never find her:
no name or confirmed age, unknown miles away,
and in photographs she turns
or lunges so her red-eye ruins the whole shot.

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Born and raised in Santa Cruz, California, Maya Lowy received her MFA in poetry at the University of New Orleans in 2016 and currently lives in Bristol, UK. Her work can be found in Bacopa Literary Review, Triggerfish Critical Review, Sweet: A Literary Confection, Infection House and other publications. She tweets @mayalowy.