Johnny Cordova
Li Po walked down from the mountains
in his sandals, with a rucksack and a notebook, and took a counter stool at a truck stop diner. The waitress walked over with a pencil behind her ear and called him sweetheart as she poured him a cup of black coffee. Li Po ordered eggs, sunny side up, with hash browns and a side of bacon. He looked around and sipped his coffee while he waited for his food. He was hungry after a long night walking through forests.
Truckers in cowboy hats and baseball caps lined the long counter, hunched over newspapers and breakfast plates, some of them smoking cigarettes. Li Po turned to the trucker on his left and said, “Excuse me, sir, I’m looking for a ride to the shores of the Yangtze River.” The trucker looked him over and said, “I don’t know where that is, partner,” then went back to reading the news. Li Po squinted into his coffee mug, cupped between his palms, and looked to the waitress for a refill. Nobody knew who he was or where he was going.
Ryokan owns a barbershop
tucked into a narrow soi in Saphan Khwai, where I live. I visit him once a week and ask him to shave my head with a straight razor. I love the way he meditates on the grain, the steady touch of his fingers, the way the blade feels sliding over my skin.
There is an antique barber’s chair and a sink, a small wooden bench against the wall, a bamboo mat on the floor where Ryokan sits and takes his lunch. The sign over the door says Great Barber. When he is finished shaving my head, he trims my eyebrows and massages coconut oil into my scalp. “Now you can be a monk,” he whispers in my ear. He makes the same joke every week. Giggling as if it were the first time he’s thought about it.
Johnny Cordova's poetry has appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review, Louisiana Literature, Moon City Review, Salt Hill Journal, Soundings East, and elsewhere. He lives at Triveni Ashram, in northern Arizona, where he co-edits Shō Poetry Journal with his wife, Dominique Ahkong.
Website: johnnycordova.com Instagram and Twitter: @_johnnycordova Bluesky: @johnnycordova.bsky.social Facebook: www.facebook.com/johnny.cordova.35.
Artwork: “Blue Dawn” by Daniel Lurie
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